The Year Galileo Dropped the Sky

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."