By Alicia Ostriker
My husband says dark matter is a reality
not just some theory invented by adolescent computers
he can prove it exists and is everywhere
forming invisible haloes around everything
and somehow because of gravity
holding everything loosely together
the way a child wants to escape its parents
and doesn’t want to—what’s that—
we don’t know what it is but we know it is real
the way our mothers and fathers fondly
angrily followed fixed orbits around
each other like mice on a track
the way every human and every atom
rushes through space wrapped in its invisible
halo, this big shadow—that’s dark dark matter
sweetheart, while the galaxies
in the wealth of their ferocious protective bubbles
stare at each other
unable to cease
proudly
receding
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I was awoken at 6:30 a.m. by a spider in my bed, which I do not recommend unless 1) you love creepy crawly things in bed with you or 2) you enjoy a huge amount of screaming and cursing followed by an adrenaline headache. After that inauspicious start, I had a fairly nice afternoon: I met Kay for lunch at Tara Thai and walked around Washingtonian Lake, where the goslings from a few weeks ago have become awkward adolescent geese and a new family of babies has hatched!
The weather was magnificent, in the 70s and breezy, with flowers in bloom all around the lake. I stopped at the mall and Home Depot in the late afternoon, then we had leftovers for dinner and watched The 100 (come on, Octavia, I really want to root for you but you are making it so hard, and Marcus, WTF are you doing) and the second episode of Patrick Melrose (somewhat less harrowing than the second, though the vast majority of characters are still such despicable people).
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