Poetry
Astronomy for the Grieving
A poem about distance, light, and the way love continues to arrive after loss.
R
Richard Nkwenti
1 min read
The astronomer says
some stars are already gone
when their light enters the eye.
I write this down
as if it were instruction.
Perhaps grief is not darkness
but distance—
the long obedience of light
crossing what cannot be crossed.
Tonight your laughter arrives
from a year I can no longer touch.
It rests on the table,
bright and late.
I do not ask it to become a body.
I do not call absence a lesson.
I simply stand beneath
what traveled faithfully,
and let the sky keep
both facts:
the star is gone,
the light is here.
