Page 178 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

Tricia Knoll

The Divorce of the Night Sky

Announcement of the filing of no-fault dissolution papers appeared in the Times

near the obits. I read it over oatmeal with raisins. I saw another article standing in

a grocery line to pay for an organic turkey. Front page in the Enquirer beside a

photo of Armstrong on the moon. On the noon news a cartographer led in to a

holiday weather forecast with a satellite photo of earth at midnight, pointing to

black outs around war zones, fading to videos of street lamps and security flood

lights with motion detectors. A state park in New Mexico claimed the title of

darkest place on earth using the Bortle Scale. A couple in Miami named their first

daughter Venus. An interview with an astronomy professor who developed an

elaborate infidelity metaphor involving Earth and Heaven got tweeted worldwide.

The night came on in silence.

My family and friends flew in for Thanksgiving on Wednesday night. They told

how they leaned toward jet windows to trace the light rivers of freeways and

constellations of big box parking lots. As we settled as my table, I lit six beeswax

candles and admired the shine of my polished silver. I’d found online a brimming

dipper poem, a two-part ode to both big and little. We read it in unison. Silence

was our grace.

My son played a bubble-bursting game on his cell phone with his hands under

the table, pretending to look prayerful. Mother asked him if he had ever seen the

Milky Way. He shook his head without looking up. My second cousin-once-

removed described the allure of a one-way trip to Mars and passed mashed

potatoes. His wife, the only lawyer at the table, said the divorce was expected,

that this happens whenever one side stops paying attention, takes the other for

granted. My son achieved a high score that rang bells.