by Alecia Beymer

"Scientists Watched a Star Explode in Real Time for the First Time Ever." LiveScience, https://www.livescience.com/first-supernova-real-time-observations.

Closeness is a fiery supernova located 120 million light years from earth. Even in its violent collapse, we watched. We talked as if we knew each other all along. Days, arms like scarves around the neck. Days like small children reaching their arms to a parent. What of this desire to be held? There were conversations: sentences sewing distance. Say goodbye, on repeat. How did I learn to be close to someone? Looking up, a clattering of light fused into darkness. I realize later, we were all just learning how to love. Arms expanded in belief that someone might run towards them. Meanwhile, the wind cradles shallow edges—cutting on the backs of necks. Tiny explosions.

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Alecia Beymer is an Assistant Professor - Educator in the English Department at the University of Cincinnati. Her poems have been published in Bellevue Literary Review, The Inflectionist Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Sugar House Review. Her research is focused on literacies formed by space and place, considerations of the interconnected resonances of teachers and students, and the poetics of education.