Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star

would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons

equals the collective weight of every animal

on earth. Including the insects. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible

until I consider how it is to swallow grief-

just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed

a neutron star. How dense it is,

how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.

How difficult it is to move then.

How impossible to believe that anything

could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other

with great tenderness. One is

the sheer miracle that we are here together

on a planet surrounded by dying stars.

One is that we cannot see what

anyone else has swallowed.