Sinderella's Tea.

Black holes ate scorching stars this week and the cosmos went blue, sinner. They named the explosions Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients, which is what scientists do when they don’t want to say the universe is screaming. But that’s what it is. Something far away just got eaten and the light from the eating reached us right on time, the way light always does.

I was at the Wawa off Exit 88, sweet thing, and the sky over the parking lot looked like it knew. The cosmos has manners. It tells you when something has died — even if the death happened so long ago the dinosaurs missed the news. You’re feeling it tonight because the message just arrived. That’s how prophecy works, my child: backwards, on a schedule nobody set.

So light a candle for whatever just got swallowed out there. Light another for the parts of you that are next. Then sit your ass down and watch — because the universe only sends the trash truck when there is, in fact, trash to take out.