Devonne Brown

“Turn in your papers.”

“I’m not finished. You didn’t give us enough time,” said Jason.

“You had two days to copy ten sentences correctly. That was enough time,” I said.

“I wasn’t listening, that’s not fair. I’m calling my  mom,” said Jason.

Pressure. 

I wasn’t listening either. 

I wasn’t listening half of the time when I was a kid or a teenager.  I didn’t listen when I was in college, or when I was supposed to listen about career moves and smart financial decisions and such.

I listened when I had to take care of my babies. I listened then. I listened hard, then it was over. 

Two decades and two boys vanished like they’d never existed. 

Pressure.

I want to finish my masterpiece novel, publish it with aplomb, leave its vast legacy to my boys, and die. I have a trail of too many secrets and mistakes to sort out for a slow agonizing death. I don’t want time for that. Take me out quick.

Sparkling colored oblongs spiral into infinity. Our galaxy sits behind bazillions of galaxies, in front of gazillions of galaxies, spiraling around them, in a galaxy? I am reminded of Dante’s Paradise Lost. Where are we on that continuum where the climb took Virgil through the pit of hell, and brought him up to paradise? I wonder how close we are to Satan’s wings, where all the flapping comes from. I love it that he’s frozen in ice in the bottom, the very bottom of Hell itself. Sometimes, I think I’m close. He’s responsible for the constant breeze. Some rings of the underworld are closer than others…shake it off.

 I laugh at myself for the nerd that I am, and choose to marvel at the wonder of the galaxies’ lights instead. I try to wrap my head around all that that could  mean. So I thought of this:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 

When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, 

When I sitting heard the learn'd astronomer 

where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, 

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

By Walt Whitman.