Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

I set the cake down on Gina’s marble countertop. The moment my fingers release the glass platter, I feel the same sort of reprieve killers must after successfully burying a body. To celebrate ridding myself of the transphobic baked good, I fix myself a mimosa.

She is sprawled out in her bed like a dead butterfly in a display case, and I am cocooned next to her, watching her breathe.

I want to hold people’s beating hearts in my hands. I want to see all their arteries. I want to study how fully formed and bloody they are.

I will never understand how my dad could stand in the glow of my mom, as if an inch from a star, and be unmoved by her formidable light. It has been devastating to watch her fade in response to him.

When stars fall into black holes, they seem to do it slowly. Because of gravitational time dilation, they look as if they are paused. If a person were to fall into a black hole, they would be spaghettified; however, to anyone watching, they would look as if they didn’t fall.