07/30/2026
The Gravity Between Us
By: Anita Sumrall
The heavens taught me every star was faithful to its flame,
That constellations held because each light remained the same.
I charted all my nights by you, I never learned to roam,
For every wandering galaxy still whispered, “This is home.”
I trusted like the moon believes the earth will never stray,
Content to lose itself each night because dawn keeps its way.
I never feared the gravity that held my world in place,
I only knew the quiet pull that drew me to your face.
Then somewhere in the endless dark, unseen by naked eyes,
A black hole formed where once I found the bluest, clearest skies.
No comet screamed its warning through the silence overhead,
The universe I leaned upon collapsed beneath my tread.
The stars did not explode at once, they simply disappeared.
The silence hurt far more because it sounded like the years.
For even dying galaxies still cast a borrowed gleam,
I smiled beneath a counterfeit and called it still a dream.
How strange the knife that finds your ribs while hidden in your chest,
The hand that knows your heartbeat can wound your spirit best.
No stranger held the telescope that shattered heaven through,
The constellation breaking me was one I named for you.
You were the northern star I swore no tempest could erase,
Yet somehow I awoke to find an empty patch of space.
I searched the heavens desperately for one familiar spark,
But every answer echoed back as cold and vast and dark.
The moon became a widow draped in silver funeral lace,
Dragging all her broken light across the evening’s face.
She wore the sun’s remembered glow yet could not make it stay,
I knew exactly how she felt before the break of day.
The planets kept their patient dance while mine forgot to spin,
An orbit built through sacred vows came crashing from within.
The laws that held the cosmos fast seemed suddenly untrue,
If gravity could fail the stars, what hope was left for two?
The stars became like shattered glass embedded in my skin,
Each breath drove broken galaxies another inch within.
I clawed at every splinter with my trembling, bleeding hands,
The universe kept widening beyond what grief withstands.
They say that stars burn brightest just before they finally die,
But no one speaks of how they smile while teaching you to cry.
I warmed myself beneath a sun already dressed for death,
Still calling something “living” that had lost its final breath.
A black hole wears no warning sign, it smiles without a scar.
It simply steals the gravity from every neighboring star.
It leaves the heavens looking whole to every passing eye,
While somewhere deep inside the dark a thousand galaxies die.
I mourned you while you held me close, I grieved you while you stayed.
I buried living memories beneath the plans we’d made.
What crueler kind of funeral could any soul attend
Than watching someone breathe beside the place where dreams must end?
I hated every photograph that proved our joy was true,
Because they showed a universe I thought I always knew.
I searched each laugh for hidden cracks, each kiss for some disguise,
I even came to question if I’d ever known your eyes.
I asked the stars what sin I’d sown to earn such ruthless art,
To have my soul dissected by the keeper of my heart.
For strangers break the bones that time eventually renews,
But soulmates know the secret doors no armor can refuse.
Yet somehow in the vacuum where all living sound had ceased,
I heard the smallest heartbeat still refusing its release.
Not loud enough to drown my grief or silence what you’d done,
Just strong enough to whisper that our story wasn’t done.
You never named the darkness light or called betrayal good.
You stood inside the wreckage where my shattered heavens stood.
You gathered every fallen star your own hands helped unmake,
And wept because the sky you broke was ours, not mine, to break.
You did not ask my wounds to close because you wished them shut,
You learned to kiss the ragged edge of every place they’d cut.
You stayed when love was uglier than either of us knew,
And proved that even broken stars still recognize what’s true.
Now I know,
The moon is scarred by countless stones no mortal eye can trace,
Yet every night she rises still with quiet, borrowed grace.
Perhaps that’s what a soulmate is, not one who cannot fall,
But one who climbs back through the dark when love has lost it all.
So if our names are written where the oldest stars still burn,
Let every shattered orbit mark the road by our return.
For heaven was not broken by the wound that split us through,
It simply carved a larger sky with room for me and you.
