the night was young

(only 13.7 billion years old)

they called me the ring around saturn

spinning words as particles of ice and dust

my whole universe

(the stars, planets, galaxies, nebulas, quasars)

stood still

like the moment before the big bang

when everything was packed into an infinitesimally small

massively dense speck

then i met you.

and my whole universe underwent an enormous increase

in its rate of expansion

forming a soup of primitive particles

i met you on one of the 274.92 starry nights

of 365.26 days

baffled by the apparent gravitational anomaly that drew me to you

i could measure the exact frequency of your voice

when you spoke my name

but couldn’t explain the correlation

with the increased number of beats my heart produced

you penetrated through my skin like radiation

watched my veins branch like fractals

made music out of me with your fingers on my body

we were planets traveling in well-determined orbits

forever in the past

forever in the future

we spent 274.92 starry nights searching for cassiopeia

365.26 days of nothing turned into

365.26 days of

something

you left blooming flowers on my skin

turned my body into art

carefully polishing and restoring

a masterpiece of soft curves and harsh lines

it is said when you stand at the edge of a black hole

one minute there equals a thousand years on earth

and that is precisely how i felt with you

together we fit like pangaea

but even pangaea broke away once upon a time

as smiles turned into scowls

lasting for eternities

last night i drank water from a wine glass

and prayed to a god i don’t believe in

for the strength to join our parallel lines

we are planets knocked out of their orbit

i have trouble letting go

showing the world my battered palms

rope burned and bloody

from trying to grip our wayward threads a little tighter

letting go is like taking a breath

but realizing i am underwater

i spent the remaining 90.3 starless nights

(devoted to storms and snow)

pondering what happened

nary a theory.