On September 14, 2015, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration observed
the first gravitational waves from two colliding black holes, confirming
the final undetected prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Poincaré first predicted in 1905
the existence of gravitational waves—
their radiant curve of spacetime
how skin, muscle echo sinew, bone
—then again, Einstein, in 1916.
Little theory of our world, its gravity.
And one billion years before
all this—though before may be a misnomer,
years a thermodynamic accident—two black holes
fell together, bodiless to bodiless dark.
The hour of your birth, their wedded
sound arrived on earth. We listened,
ear tipped toward cosmic pulse, toward you,
the sonographer’s song. Little theory,
your heart the size of an American
black walnut. I plucked you from darkness,
tucked you in my own lightless body.
I hope you will forgive this wanting
for you. Years later—though later may be
a misnomer, too—you tell me
how long you expect you will
love me. Until the last number,
you say. Now I am counting the spill
of integers, wondering when
it became thinkable: how even
our universe will pull itself apart
Julie Phillips Brown is an interdisciplinary poet, visual artist, literary critic, and editor. She is the author of The Adjacent Possible (Green Writers Press, 2021), winner of the Hopper Poetry Prize, and a recipient of the Freund Prize from Cornell University. Her writing appears in Ariadne, Borderlands, Columbia Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, interim, Plume, The Rumpus, Twyckenham Notes, Vassar Review, Yemassee, and elsewhere. She lives in Lexington, Virginia, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and studio art. Find her at tactualpoiesis.com.