this gravitational pull…

this gravitational pull isn’t strong enough to hold things together

By Natasha Deonarain

velocities slowed, we gather here despite the perihelion—

rent from our mirrored worlds by a celestial orb that’s 99.86%

of our entire mass, two spheres crowded

into a single room on the fourth floor of a wing in L&D and her,

the third not yet split and a father who passed by six months ago,

supine in blue waffle sheets, frog-legged under overhead lights

in this strange, stark new world with its wood-framed window

and waist high metal blanket box on wheels tucked to the side

and then the rend that produces the softest pink satellite bounced into

nobody’s arms, walnut eyes unseeingly wide, 

already beckoning that we stay, shock of slicked black hair so thick

she’s an enigma to the ladies-in-wait and

on the window sill a single white dove that,

for one awed moment perched otherworldly still—

then quietly     spread her wings           and slipped into the day as we 

our velocities already          picking up speed             slingshot into disparate

     trajectories towards the aphelion         never to be in alignment

again