Light of My Life

I smile. 

She waves. 

A train cuts between us. 

I become a beam of light, bouncing 

off the top of the staircase to reach her platform. 

She’s still there. We grab coffee. She’s a physicist. 

Light is a particle, etching our each encounter on speckled film. 

Glittering sunrises, flickering candlelight dinners, holiday lanterns. 

Under dusky moonlight, she shares news with a gleam in her eye. 

Not the glow of pregnancy—she landed a professorship abroad, 

tenure track. We’re different wavelengths. Light is a wave, 

illuminating two paths, diffracting into many outcomes. 

She’s beside me, but she’s also on the departing train. 

She waves. 

I smile.