I told myself clouds, but stars confronted me,
my cosmic ignorance: speed of light,

gravity, the workings of clocks, cell division,
fossilization, my skin’s elasticity,

and some nights the lunar phase that leaves no moon
to find. I carried you in circles,

eyes angling for crescent, quarter, halo.
You pursed your lips, waited for my revelation.

If absence could be filled at will, disappointment
swept away like ash— If negative spaces

did not call us here, to shadow—  If all it took
was gesture, words—  But I cannot shift

the geometry of space. I have no answers
to give you. I have held on tightly only to find

my palm impressed with fingernails: parentheses
waiting for content. Should I say, Look there,

little one! Heaven, empty as a drained pool.
Forgive me. I met your first effort at speech

with silence, the only answer consonant
with loss, my offering: this blank sky.

3QR Author Note

3QR Author Bios