The Galaxy Explodes When You Meet Someone New

Awake. Arise. Your round earth turns. Far away, monkeys in the jungle swing from branch to branch. Elephants on the savannah lift their trunks to the sky. Bears in the mountains roar.

All this commotion carries to your bed, pulls open your crusted eyes. Where her chest fills with air. Her shoulders gently drop. How sweet is this light breathing.

You inch the blanket onto her. She sleeps as you stand before your bedroom mirror. Majestically, like the peoples of the tundra who stand before their igloos with fresh morning kills of pink salmon and blubbery whale.

Now they lay down their gifts. The heavens breath in an anxious inhale. She rustles; you freeze. You are the statue David, your manhood dangling as the worms emerge from the ground, dancing their worm dances.

She flips her body and buries her head in your pillow. You can move again. But for a moment you admire her. You’ve planned your future together already. You put on pants. You go to the kitchen.

Like a king of a savage but grand world where everyone in the royal court eats massive legs of hearty meat, you turn on the burner. Warmth shoots out, as it does from the beacon fires now being lit in every nation. Make your eggs. Your toast and your coffee too.

Everything has been prepared, set on your humble kitchen table. A choir sings as she emerges, as the villagers in ancient lands emerge from their tents to spread out centerpieces of flowers, tablecloths of fine linens, feasts of breads and fresh fruits, creamy milks and aged cheeses. This is a day of celebration.

Your sweatshirt is soft and gray, and it must have been touched by the hand of God, because she is pulling you close with it and kissing you now. An angel kisses you, from the heavens now pregnant with songs of hosanna.

Like a servant, you hand her breakfast. She receives it like holy communion.

“So good,” she says, smiling a toothy smile. The earth could not contain it. The entire galaxy could barely be its boundary. “But I’m cold,” she says as she eats. She is Christ, dying for your sins on Golgotha. She can save you from the flames of hell. “Can I borrow your sweatshirt?”

“Sure,” you say, “yeah.” And as she puts it on, leaving you bare, stars explode, new planets form. The lightest of elements, the heaviest of dark matter. Breakfast occurs over infinity.

She has eaten. You have broken bread and she is ready to leave. She has to meet a friend. At your doorstep you have become a hairy ape from the beginning of man. And as you kiss, you transfer to her every particle of meaning ever conjured from the consciousness of all your ancestors.

Now it’s over. She pats your chest and walks to her car. Growing smaller, she is drifting like an ocean tide, and you find yourself suffocating with fondness. Your only oxygen is knowing you will see her again. Your sweatshirt too.

How loud is that belief. So loud it drowns out every other voice in the world. All the world toasting to her finding someone else, someone new.