Sarah Blake

Neutron Star

At the museum, I stand on a scale that tells me how much I’d weigh on a neutron star. (Trillions of pounds.)
I could walk the 20 miles around it in a day or two, except
not at that weight. Wherever I ended up on the star, that’d be it for me.

And also I’d be burned up faster than you can tut your tongue.
And also I’d be imploding from the pressure.

I guess I’d be a mess of ash pulled quickly to the surface.
And then that’d keep burning.

Neutron stars are the densest, but that’s only because the ones with more mass turned into black holes.
I’d rather not say those don’t exist, that those anti-exist. I’d rather say
those are still dense stars, just more dense, more dense.

If we figure out teleportation, I can imagine the tests.
We set up a camera feed off a satellite, and we send a mannequin in a new suit up there,
and we watch our equipment fail, and the mannequin disappears in a sort of explosion, and we try again.

And once the mannequin holds up, we send a doll full of fluid. Then an animal.
Then a bigger animal. And lots of them die despite our precautions. But we figure it out.
And someone stands on the neutron star eventually.

Someone feels like trillions of pounds in a suit that’s counteracting feeling like trillions of pounds
and rotating rapidly through the universe. And while they’re gone one of the animals
that’s returned safely dies from a complication no one and everyone foresaw.

And it’s ok because the person standing on the neutron star expected that.
And it’s ok because they don’t believe in living on Earth anymore.

They don’t believe in it at all.



Eden Kupermintz

Trees

When I was a kid, I used to think that whenever I would throw a peach pit or an apple/pear core into some random patch of dirt (for nature, entropy, time to have its ways with it), a tree of the corresponding fruit would one day grow there.

Then, I grew up a bit and realized that, of course, the likelihood of that was rather small and that a combination of very specific parameters was needed for a tree to actually grow there. And, besides, even if it did, I probably wouldn't be there to notice it/it would die/someone would take it down and, bottom line, that the image of a fully grown tree I had in my mind was so far removed from what fruit trees actually look like or how they work that, even if the unlikely event of a tree growing where I had disposed of said core/pit/stone/seed had taken place, I wouldn't even recognize its result.

Then, I grew up a bit more and realized that, of course, every single germinating essence of tree that I had thrown had grown into a tree and now I am surrounded by majestic, beautiful trees that blossom around me in all the chromatic colors of an inner rainbow and their fragrance engulfs me and I swim in a sea of pears and peaches and bright, green apples and the heady elixir of their being is everything I've ever needed to live my life, embraced by my supple, gorgeous trees that had taken root instantly whenever I had thrown a seed into some random dirt patch for nature, entropy, and time had had their way

This is not a metaphor.