(after a paper comparing the neural network of the human brain to the cosmic web of galaxies)

Line art and watercolour painting of a translucent child’s head with a tiny red cube behind the eyes, glowing faintly. A mirror floats above, angled toward a vast, starlit sky—suggesting the mind’s misunderstanding of its own scale.

1.

When I was a child

I believed my mind lived in a box

just behind my eyes

a small red room

with a blinking light.

The sky was somewhere else.

Above us. Blue. Endless.

I did not yet understand

that one could live

inside a mirror.

Line art and watercolour drawing of a spidery neuron and a swirling galaxy, each with dotted connection lines—slowly merging into one another at the edges as if entangled.

2.

Consider:

A neuron.

A galaxy.

A silence

spun into shape

by absence and

longing.

The neuron sends.

The galaxy receives.

Or the other way around.

(Does it matter?)

Connection is not local.

It is luminous.

Line art and watercolour drawing of a tangled web of threads pulling into knotted starbursts. Neurons cluster around central hubs and galaxies are drawn toward gravitational wells by a delicate hand.

3.

Network degree centrality:

who gets to be the center

of gravity?

The brain has rules.

The universe does not.

Still, they share

the urge to branch

the logic of filaments

the lust to cluster

the danger of becoming

a knot.

Watercolour painting of a dark night sky with faint ghost-light in the shape of a memory.

4.

I read once

that the cosmos is 13.8 billion years old

and your brain

contains a memory of light

that old.

Who stored it?

What language was it written in?

Why does grief feel

like starlight

arriving late?

Line and watercolour painting of a waveform and a swirl: one labeled “thought,” the other “space-time.” Both emanate from a shared point of origin—an eye

5.

Electrochemical impulse.

Gravitational drift.

You see the difference?

You do.

But the difference may be

semantics.

My father used to say

Don’t go looking for meaning in a thunderstorm.

But I say

Why not?

Lightning is a network.

So is thought.

So is regret.

A torso-like cosmos: the ribcage is made of milky way filaments. Floating galaxies pulse gently between the bones.

6.

Sometimes

when I close my eyes

I see the filaments

not as threads

but as ribs

of a sleeping god.

And in that ribcage:

a brain.

A star cluster.

A woman writing this poem.

A mosquito drunk on blood.

A spiral that begins as a neuron’s dendrites, becomes a galaxy’s arm, and finally morphs into a constellation that outlines a human face. Inside the face: more spirals. A recursive dreamscape.

7.

There is a story

told in both

the synapse

and the spiral arm.

It begins in silence.

And ends

in recursion.

Which is to say:

We are what connects.

We are what forgets.

We are what remembers.

All memory is

a constellation

seen from the inside out.

✷

About this poem

💡 The spark

This poem emerged from a chain of curiosity, sparked by the question: Can the structure of the human brain mirror the structure of the cosmos?

I’d been reading A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett and noticing how often the human brain was surfacing in conversations about AI—especially in the podcasts I’d been listening to. One night, I found myself thinking about neural networks and constellations. I remembered how the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) looks a little like a star map. Was there any correlation between the number of neurons in the brain and the number of stars in the Milky Way?

🔍 The question (Google)

So I searched Google for:

“constellations like neural networks in brain”

The AI-generated response was surprisingly rich, conceptual, scientific, even poetic. It fired up my imagination.

The human brain's neural network and the cosmic web of galaxies share striking similarities in structure and organization, despite the vast differences in their scale and physical components. Both systems exhibit a complex, interconnected network of elements (neurons or galaxies) linked by filaments or connections, creating a hierarchical structure with clusters and branching patterns…

🪄 Generating the poem (ChatGPT)

I copied the entire response into ChatGPT and prompted it to:

Create a series of engaging, philosophical haikus based on the similarity between the human brain’s neural network and the cosmic web of galaxies. Use highly original, creative fresh language.

The haikus were good, but a little sterile. I’d recently been introduced to the writing of Anne Carson and was drawn to her fragmented, lyrical, and philosophical style. So I tried this:

Write a longer poem in the style of Anne Carson about this topic.

That prompt became A Brief History of Interconnection.

I didn’t edit the poem at all, it felt complete in its own way. A purely AI-generated artifact, it appealed to me with its quiet intensity.

🎨 Visuals (DALL·E)

To bring the poem to life visually, I asked ChatGPT to suggest illustration ideas for each section. I then used those prompts in DALL·E to generate accompanying artwork, moody, dreamlike watercolor and ink images that reflect the brain-galaxy metaphor running through the piece.

This was a fast and satisfying creative experiment using AI tools. It felt collaborative and strangely personal.

🔁 The flow

*A visual flow of the creative process behind the poem*

🛠️ Tools used

Human + Google’s AI Overview (initial spark)
ChatGPT (writing + ideation)
DALL·E (art generation)
VS Code & Mermaid.js (process diagram)

A Brief History of Interconnection

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About this poem

The Way, the Truth, & the Light