(The following piece challenges the assumption that time is a nonspatial continuum through which events occur in irreversible sequence from the past, through the present, and into the future.  What if the reverse were true?)

REVERSAL 

From the end of time and deep space,
Unknown forces begin the life imperative:
A dance of quarks, bosons and leptons gaining energy,
Finding each other, bonding harmoniously
Into atoms, molecules, DNA, substance, tissue,
And a mature, lifeless mature human form.

Across the substance of its brain, electrical potential develops. 
An electron leaps through a synapse to discover neuronal networks,
And joins current flowing on its mission:
Initiate contraction in cardiac muscle.
 
A slow, weak rhythm of devolution begins,
Moving blood to organs and senses. 
Carbon dioxide inhaled; oxygen exhaled. 
Food, water, light, and sound expelled to their sources. 
Waste returned, becoming fuel for strong, functioning tissue.
 
Robust adulthood wanes in an inexorable youthing process. 
Maturity strives toward immaturity; data departs brain and senses;
Function and behavior are unlearned and desocialized;
Reality ungrasps; insights unform;
Superego dissipates to naiveté.

Despite increasing love, warmth, and nurturance,
The being diminishes in size, strength, balance, mobility;
Regresses to pristine helplessness
Through infancy to birth, to womb, to formless mass,
To deconception and unlinking of DNA,
To single sperm, single egg; molecules,
Atoms unbonding, disengaging,
Bidding others farewell in their last dance
Into particles pulled by unknown forces,
Then returning to deep space and the beginning of time.
 

—Will Walsh