redshift

Forsaking hundreds of dollars in toys, my son
plays with a tape measure.
He hands me one end and walks away.
When the tape grows taut, he smiles as I let my bit go,
watching it slither back. Six feet is always six feet. I am here.
He is there.

I was ten when I got
that first, flimsy
blue telescope. Perhaps my obsession
with the past begins there.

you excel at being wrong about people,
he told me after three days of silence.

There is movement between us,
though we’ve mastered
the deception of stasis. Such is the illusion
actors project when the scene plays
itself out in an empty house.

I still look for answers in a sky I can’t touch.
Star charts only explain
how it used to be—the distance
light must travel for me to see.

a pulling apart by forces
laying quietly in a cynic’s heart,
so that time
does not remember
the could-have-beens

the space between us,
an arm’s length or a thousand miles,
swallowed whole.

sorry to be heavy,
all my lightness is gone.