Shooting Star

Einstein overturned the idea that time is the same everywhere.

 Time is relative for a horror movie, for a soccer match. For a storm brewing. You kept windows unfastened, watched a podcast. Our star bent over the tub in the adjoining bathroom; her three-year-old hands splashed water.

The fastest thing in the Universe, light, always travels at the same speed, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

I was flying on work, and you, static, yet when you realized and screamed, the freakiness of a bathtub drowning hit us at the same speed.

Gravity bends light by stretching time and space.

Our selves dig holes to hide. We devolve into stones. For each day of seven years now, we take loaded breaths — accusatory and stinging at first; barely-there, withdrawn, later.

Shooting stars may look like stars, but they are just dust burning up.

I see you spiral in and out of the room, waiting for conversation. I watch the soup bubble, place spoons like sledgehammers, plates, not bowls.

As things travel, they seem to become shorter and heavier.

You drag your feet to the table. Hover over the plates. Or are they barren moons? You turn to the crockery cabinet, bring the bowls.

A satellite orbits at the height where its momentum exactly balances the pull of gravity.

I hear the echo of your voice talking about your day in some distant universe. They say sound doesn’t travel in void. These are not your exactly words, only eroded thoughts clasped tight in the grief between us.

Meteors glow momentarily as a streak across the sky, leave us an ionization trail.

We stay on that trail, suspended. After dinner, you grab a pillow; curl up solo on the sofa. I turn on my side of the bed and yours. Count galaxies unfurl.

Big Bang will repeat.

How I wait for my this universe to contract.