CELESTIAL TRIALS

my great-great-grandfather was a comet, long for nothing. when he impacted he shot forth my contemporaries, littering the earth with my remains. his bastard son retired early on to a cave where he could smash the preliterate poetry out of his brains; bloodspatter the pretty history of the universe he never knew. when you're older, you'll understand, the comet might have said, but my great-grandfather--an oblivious sage, inanimate, candid, aimless--would never deign to sin against speechlessness. i am a latterday excrescence of his desultory cosmic isolationism, how ever many times removed. the accident of his end is my legacy; all i know how to do is crash and burn. Published April 15th, 2020 on her Neutral Things blog.