The Heart & the Planet

The Heart & the Planet

The telescope had always been in the dining room. This I knew from the beginning. In those fabulous first months you confessed that you found it sweet that I often instead observed my eyelashes in the eye piece when viewing the starry sky than comets or planets. I found it adventurous to traipse through long grass on summer nights to catch a view of a comet and then spend the rest of the night pinching and pulling ticks, laughing about if it had been worth it. In January I shopped for rings with a friend. She wanted to be prepared for if you asked her an opinion on what diamond or setting I would prefer when you asked for my hand. “Something as sparkly as those stars of his,” we joked over the coffee that followed. I would have pinched a thousand more ticks in my lifetime to have caught every meteor shower with you.

But then the maps of our solar system started to dominate your bedroom floor. You sat in the center of these beloved unfolded/ folded/ refolded/ unfolded rectangles like the very sun you studied so diligently during the trial of Pluto. I joined you at the center of the maps for one tender evening. Your pointer finger remained outstretched for an entire hour or more as you spun your planetary knowledge into a story that I could have listened to for hours. The concept of the solar system stretching out through a finite amount of space and the mysterious space beyond it made made me dizzy. I questioned if your devotion toward Pluto was an empathetic response for an underdog who rested in his frozen outskirts of the solar system, not quite “enough” to fit in with the others. I silently questioned if you had been an outcast in high school- or perhaps junior high?- and thus pledged allegiance with the small planet. You followed the eviction of Pluto from the solar system diligently, occasionally missing days of work and even your brother's fortieth birthday. I found you sharing sentiments on NASA-groupie web forums and chat rooms, pleading Pluto's case with a tenacity that would make lawyers blush. I joked that you reminded me of a fanatical fourth grade nerd-boy preparing for a science fair which in retrospect may have been the assassination of Franz Ferdinand of our relationship.

Ten years later I am scrolling through the images taken of Pluto's fly-by and I am sentimentally smitten with the heart-like shape warming the belly of this beautiful sphere. If I wanted my heart to ache a little more I know I could find your writing somewhere on a NASA-groupie web forum. Instead I scroll through Pluto's glorious five minutes of fame, marveling at this frozen planet's little warm belly which scientists cannot explain. I step out into the backyard and locate the barely-traceable dippers and Orions belt. I try to magine Pluto being out there but it is barely possible - he is, after all, at the very edge of the system and I am standing here, light years away. I am alone tonight but in awe and I am okay if some things go unexplained.