Laws of Motion

We don’t talk the way we used to / but sometimes I still feel the pull / the air thick with what used to be gravity / your voice dimming / a hum caught between rooms / I think of you in motion / in fragments / your voice screaming against the faucet / steam ghosting your face / how even light, stretched too far, forgets its source / once, you said everything keeps moving until something stops it / so I wonder if it was time that slowed us / or the quiet between what we meant and what we said / distance growing like a crack beneath paint / invisible until it splits / last spring, I found your handwriting on a grocery list / cursive thinning at the edges / paper softening where your hand once pressed / now it’s just residue / Newton would call it equilibrium / I call it the stillness that comes after naming / each law another way to say silence collects / settles / fills the room like dust / when I pass your doorway / the air still shifts / slightly / measurable only in ache / someone told me sound never dies / it only travels / maybe that’s why, some mornings, I hear dishes clink / the soft drag of your slippers across tile / and pause / certain for a moment / that nothing has moved at all.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Number 3. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.