If it’s true that the core of the Milky Way
smells like raspberries and tastes like rum,
as astronomer Arnaud Belloche says,
and if it’s true that every pomegranate
everywhere contains exactly 285 seeds
— or maybe 263 but anyway Kelsey says
they all have the same amount —
and if it’s really true that our earlobes
align perfectly with our nipples, as Katie says,
well then I’m stunned, mouth agape, like
Michael Caine on the set of Batman, struck dumb
upon first sight of Heath Ledger as The Joker.
What’s my first line? What’s my first line?
Michael Caine, playing Alfred, must have wondered,
fumbling for the line like a poet or like me
when I first saw you, across the room
at a party. I’d like to say I was cool
like Brando, in Streetcar, “We’ve had this date
from the beginning,” but that would be untrue.
I was tongue-tied, speechless like Michael Caine.
If it’s true that 100,000 Jews escaped Sweden
the night before the Nazis arrived because
citizens with boats rallied to ferry them away
— and why doubt it? The stars are evidence
that bright lights interrupt the sprawling darkness —
then maybe I can believe that astronomers,
if they squinted hard enough, could see
our love and smell it and taste it and chart it
on the stars, which also predict with some certainty
that you’ll never leave me and we’ll
never leave this miraculous life.
Photo By: Shai Barzilay