Tell us again

A poem based on Tincture by A.Gibson

Imagine:

When a friendship leaves,

the heart moves through the universe

trying to explain what has been lost.

The universe leans closer to listen.

It begins with the smallest things:

It tells the stars about a laugh,

how it could arrive suddenly,

fill a room,

bend the air around it the way gravity bends light.

The stars answer first:

We burn for billions of years, they say,

but we have never known joy between two friends like that.

The universe asks again.

So the heart keeps explaining:

There were concerts:

standing shoulder to shoulder

while music lifted an entire crowd.

Chappell, Hootie, with many in years to come.

The lights rising over the WalmartAmp.

The moment when the first song started

and the night felt bigger than itself as we screamed like school girls mad for our celebrity crush.

The comets streak past and listen.

We cross entire skies, they say,

but we have never seen two friends hold concert excitement like that.

The universe asks again.

So the heart tells them about brunches.

Coffee cooling on the table

while conversations wandered everywhere

from ridiculous stories to impossible questions:

How was Egypt?

You shocked me when we first hugged, the first moment.

What does that mean?

More depth:

Life after death.

The shape of the universe.

Whether love bends time the way gravity bends space.

The nebulae drift closer.

We make stars from dust, they say,

but we have never made a conversation come that alive.

The universe asks again.

So the heart tells them about late nights.

Bars where laughter bounced off the walls

like light looking for somewhere to land.

Plans scribbled into the future in a list a mile long and Marcos saying we both couldn’t wait for me to move to do so many things with, go on vacations we were sure we would take,

little local adventures waiting for us just down the road.

The rays of light travel billions of miles

before answering.

We cross galaxies, they say,

but we have never watched friends build futures out of ordinary days.

The universe asks again.

So the heart tells them about a movie.

Two people sitting in the dark

watching, talking about

Interstellar

and discussing time,

black holes,

whether love might travel

across impossible distance.

We both know it does.

We feel it every day from the people we have lost but not really lost.

The stars grow quiet.

No comet,

no nebula,

no wandering ray of light

has ever understood this before.

The heart tries one more time.

It says:

Two lives can orbit each other for a while.

They can share music

and mornings and evenings

and questions about the universe.

They can laugh so easily

the world briefly feels correct.

Then one day

one of them leaves the orbit.

Silence.

So much silence like a vacuum of space.

And suddenly
the sky is different.

The universe listens carefully now.

Tell us again, the stars say,
about the laugh.

Tell us again about concerts.
Tell us again about brunch tables
and bars and the movie about space.

Tell us again
about the person
who made the universe feel
briefly understandable.

And the heart keeps answering.

What else could turn ordinary nights
into stories it carries for years?

What else could make a concert
feel like the center of the universe
for two to three perfect hours
while two people shout the lyrics
like the world might end tomorrow?

What else could sit across a brunch table
while coffee grows cold
and suddenly feel like the future
is something two friends
could actually be there for each other and map together?

What else could measure time
not by clocks
but by who was there to witness it?

What else could feel gravity shift
when another human walks into the room
and laughs the way only they do?

What else could build entire future hangouts
out of conversations
that started with nothing more
than coffee
and curiosity?

What else could lose someone
and still keep their laughter
stored somewhere in the body
like a constellation
it learned by heart?

What else could feel the universe expand
inside something as small
and fragile
as a friendship?

When a friendship leaves
the heart moves through the universe
trying to describe what it was.

How laughter could fill a room.
How silence could suddenly weigh as much as space itself.
How two lives could orbit each other for a while and make the sky feel right.

Do you understand?

Nothing in space can imagine it.

No comet,
no nebula,
no wandering ray of light
can fathom the strange human miracle
of joy and grief
living in the same body
at the same time.

We cannot imagine it,
the stars say.

Tell us again about goosebumps.

Tell us again about pain.

Tell us again about the person who made the universe feel briefly understandable.

Because somewhere in this vast universe there is still a friend I'd give anything to return to me—

whose laughter and conversations my heart would recognize

anywhere.