Relativity

---

Srilikhi Nekkanti

 

yet it doesn’t have to be. For all we know, this

was the first thought I had but the last to be written.

Because it never really does flow the way we want it to

first becomes last as easily as tomorrow becomes yesterday

 

My friend in the neighboring galaxy will not see me

for another 2.54 million years. I will wave my hellos and goodbyes now

so that the light can carry it to them safely on its back

They will send me a laugh in return

and in its lilting joy a promise that everything will be okay

as it always is in the end.

 

For them, I am a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second

I will slide past with such deft stealth

that they will wonder if I were ever there

to begin with, to begin with

a solid kiss to the ground for letting me use it

and a remorseful sorry to the sky for being too far away to hold

 

Apparently, it is all about relativity

Relative to my friend in Andromeda

Relative to my mother, to me, to you

to the textbook that has to repeat its pages in

every few decades with a change

in the names or the places or the names and the places

 

When-I-am-on-my-phone-I-scroll-so-fast-that-it

all

slows

down

around

me

 

I am ensnared by the screen for a mere moment

but my mother says a month has slipped away

My month had not passed in the way hers has

Hers crept on in, in the aches of a twelve-hour shift

of a six-day work week

Mine left me before I could even greet it

 

It is about relativity, apparently, so

this can be the final line I’ll write for you and

---

 

Srilikhi Nekkanti is majoring in Psychology and planning to graduate in 2022. She’s always enjoyed reading poems and was grateful for the chance to write this piece for her Creative Writing Honors class in Fall 2020. Her instructor, Paul Blaney, selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.  She hopes you enjoy reading the poem as much as she did writing it!