TIME TRAVEL FOR BEGINNERS Every crumb of starlight sails across the universe, the journey of a million years to end inside our eyes. Except I was looking at you, canvas coverall cinched at the waist, as you undressed me with photons, wrapped me in stories, painted with x-rays, until everything glowed with backstory-the names of trees, the name of an extinguished star, still visible, ghost in the sky, climbing a staircase of optic nerve into an afterlife of sight. Hand on my hand you pointed to the past: the sun, an 8-minute time machine, the moon, one second old, and the incredible now, unfolding like a cone, megaphone of memory stretched to the sky and balanced on the tip was us, a luminous shout of life at the speed of light.
In a blink, this moment reaches the moon. When we pack up the hammock, it floats in the acid clouds of Venus. Which means that somewhere, there is a spot, past the gaps in Saturn's rings, beyond the storms of Jupiter, outside the curved embrace of the Milky Way, at least one place in the universe, where you could turn around and see us, back when we were still in love.
everything glowed/
with backstory
from the poem
Time Travel for Beginners
by Ardon Shorr
2023 Rattle Poetry Prize winner
#TwoPageTuesday #poetry
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