Theory cannot be tangible fact
like driving on I-95 to get to a lecture
on supernovae with pictures
of white dwarfs sucking mass,
of others fusing hydrogen to their iron cores
before imploding to black.
I'm delayed behind an accident,
one car with a fender blown off,
hanging on the median, driver pacing
the thin turf of tar shoulder,
on a cell phone, mouth gaping
and closing rapidly, hands stitching,
the story part factual, part theoretical.
Published in Granta (2012) and Los Angeles Review (2017).