Collisions Two neutron stars collideda hundred and thirty million years ago.The resulting kilonova rippled outgravitational eddies and light wavesthat reached our blue shores today.Now, I can prove the incandescent light bouncing off you,carrying word of the color of your jacket andthe width of your smile,travels at the same speed as the gravity wavesI would produce (if I had sufficient mass to affect the curvature of space)when I trip, falling heels over heart in an arc,spilling my tea like that kilanovaspewed Earth-sized chunks of gold into the void.

There are smaller crashes. That man in the cargo shortsis spooning sugar the densityof Mount Everest into coffeethe mass of a small cityand decades will passbefore we feel the aftershock.

—Kathryn Fritz

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