Light Years Away

Christianne Clarke

In all of time and space the place
I most want to be is in your kitchen.
The night you cooked me spaghetti,
your dazzling smile when I made a joke,
my cheeks warmed in the radiance of it
atmosphere thick with happiness.

If I could travel anywhere, I would go
back to the small apartment.
Where you held me, and I became weightless.
You kissed me and I was made of stardust.
something approaching love on the horizon.

I’ll fly to the times we spent
exploring celestial bodies,
your bedroom that winter.
eyes searching each other’s faces,
fingers gently mapping
the glowing hot surfaces of skin.
Voices whispering quiet questions
circling the gravity of words.

Those moments past that glitter in my memory
a shooting star gone too fast.
They are where I most want to be.
Where I wish I could stay.
Light years away.

The Science

You’ve likely heard before that it takes over 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach Earth, because that’s how long it takes for light to travel 90 million miles. Light years measure distance by how fast light travels in a vacuum. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, over 11 million miles a minute, it travels 5.86 trillion miles in a year. Space being so vast that the best unit of measurement we have is the length of time it will take light to reach from one place to the next.

One night while camping during the Perseid meteor shower I started to conceptualize it further. What if I thought of the stars as memories? Star gazing is in many ways the closest we will ever get to time travel, you are looking at the memory of past radiance when you look up at the stars, you are seeing their former glory, the moment for them is already gone by the time it reaches us. What would it mean to cross time and space, where would you want to be if you could?

The Poet

Christianne Clarke is a Cuban American writer from Miami Beach, US and travels frequently in the US and Europe. She is a recovering accountant and aspiring science fiction writer.

Next poem: Once Upon a Time by David F. Tatterson