What does it mean to let the heavens fall?
Well, I think of Galileo in his tower—
not a heretic, just a man
with hands full of apples and heresies,
dropping them to prove that the ground
has always hungered for the sky.
The fall is never the story.
It’s the moment just before,
when the stars grow heavy with their own light
and the air tenses
as if it might hold something
that even God forgot to name.
In the margins of Milton\'s Paradise,
you wrote in graphite:
\"Is falling a choice or just physics?\"
I’ve thought about that ever since—
your question sitting at the edge
of a universe unraveling into fire and dust.
Light always arrives late,
but darkness is an excellent record-keeper.
Did Galileo imagine
the sky he made us weigh down with laws?
Does he know
we still haven’t forgiven him
for proving gravity,
for tying our wings
to the certainty of stone?
You used to say
that angels don’t look down,
their necks stiffened by eternity.
But I’ve imagined them so many times:
heads tilted, watching the earth ache
under the weight of stars that keep burning
for no reason other than habit.
What would you name the space
between my hand reaching
and yours pulling away?
Call it inertia, call it sin,
call it whatever keeps the apple from splitting in two
before it hits the ground.
And maybe that’s why we write poetry—
to measure how far the soul drops
when you let go of the sky,
to ask Galileo what he felt
when he watched the horizon change shape
and whispered to himself:
\"I knew it would fall, but still.\"