I used to think that sidewalks were gaping fissures that held the serrated teeth of Mike Wazowski
so I would raise my arms to fly like any five-year-old
because I’d never heard of gravity and I thought Newton was just a nasty fig snack.

You would roll your onyx eyes that softened to charcoal whenever it met mine
never failing to tell me to stay frosty before your laugh bounced on the alleyway walls;
telltale signs of blotchy spray-painted hearts containing a math equation between two letters;
C + U.

But I never did.

And now, the soft whistle of Mang Mario’s bell for queso ice cream stir dysfunctional memories
of nights on the balcony when the celestial bodies gazed back at us with
vitality pouring out like alitaptaps enveloping us with the comfort of their buzzing glow.

You were always pointing out the North Star, complaining of its solitude. I’d stay quiet,
thinking that it’s got us,
but it doesn’t.

Not anymore.

That’s when I learned of Newton and that it had a connection with gravity,
that gravity was the rusted anchor that keeps the
magnitude of severed ties fulfilled.