A Familiar Glow
by Adam Gianforcaro
Who isn’t fascinated by the sun?
A collapsed nebula
of molten gas large enough
to hold one million Earths
inside of it. And yet
from this point of view
on the blue planet, the sun
is the size of a coin
held up to the afternoon sky.
Of course, the sun is more
than an ornament,
more than a white-hot orb
of hydrogen and helium;
the sun is a gift-giver, a friend,
an almost-tangible ball of heat
interacting with cholesterol in skin
to create Vitamin D
and harvest happiness.
A cosmic letter
of love and light.
And while science can explain
so much, some things
are left uncertain.
But here’s what we know:
it takes eight minutes
and twenty seconds
for the sun’s light
to reach Earth, meaning that
if the sun were to
mysteriously vanish one day,
it would take a full eight-
and-one-third minutes
for the people on Earth
to realize that anything
was wrong in that faraway
still-hot openness.
And then the sun would be gone,
nil, nothing, and yet people
would have nowhere
to look but the sky for answers.
Confused eyes would study
the not-nighttime night
with bewilderment and suspicion,
where a small but in-focus Jupiter
would remain illuminated
for an additional thirty minutes
until the light that reflected
from the distant giant
could reflect no more.
Then would come darkness,
dropping temperatures, panic.
Panic, panic, panic—
as if that’s anything new.
And there are so many ways
this could go.
What do you think? A sizzling?
A bonfire-like burning-out?
Or an expansion?—the sun
swollen like an enflamed balloon
swallowing the Earth
in its fiery mouth.
Or maybe, you come up
with your own story.
One upon a time, the sun
had enough of its life
in the Milky Way.
The sun says hello
to quantum tunneling
and goodbye to no one.
And so, as it goes,
the sun disappears.
Here’s what we don’t know:
How many would choose
to join if they could?
Who would tag along and leap
to god-knows-where?
And you? Would you
sacrifice your body’s mass
to another body’s mass?
A matrimony, like fusion.
A covalent bond.
It’s a depressing thought,
this ending,
but a beautiful one too.
I mean, who wouldn’t accept
an opportunity to be enraptured
by a colossal globe
of kaleidoscopic light?
For now, there is only waiting,
hoping, always hoping,
not knowing exactly
how or when.
But there are always numbers,
mathematical constants.
Counting as well: one, two, three,
sometimes in your head,
sometimes out loud,
all the way to five hundred—
the time in seconds it takes
for the sun’s light to reach Earth.
Now begin again, counting one, two,
over and over, counting, waiting—
until the world turns dark
like a kitchen light switched off.
And there’s an opening! a trapdoor!
and then: opened eyes,
a new world. A distant plane
with a familiar glow.
The heat of a hand-holding.
But until that time comes,
there is only counting
and waiting and yearning
for a miracle, for an anomaly.
Do you ever consider the multiverse?
A theory that says everything
that can happen does happen.
Meaning that somewhere,
at some time, whether in the past
or future or right this very instant,
you notice something strange.
What is it? Not a light,
but almost. A pinprick
of something incomprehensible.
Do you feel it, this fearlessness?
Do you walk toward
the almost-kind-of-light
and extend your hand
in greeting? In a way,
that’s exactly what this is.
A greeting, a pull,
a tenacious tugging—
but it gets stronger, denser,
and there’s a sound,
or the opposite of sound,
something like a warmth
that can mean nothing other
than Come along, welcome.
There is an embrace,
the tickle of body hair.
And there you are,
leveling your gaze,
looking around,
wondering—
Adam Gianforcaro is a writer living in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems can be found in Palette Poetry, No Contact, RHINO, Okay Donkey, Poet Lore, The Cincinnati Review miCRo series, and elsewhere. He was an Honorable Mention in The Maine Review’s 2021 Embody Awards and a winner of Button Poetry’s 2018 Short Form Contest.
