By Jacob Ginsberg
It’s at 6:12PM on a Monday after my last student of the day has cancelled on me and in my head I ask her “what do you want to do for dinner?” but instead of cracking the door to her office and asking as the cat wakes and stretches in her lap, I stare at myself in the mirror, stare into my new fridge, wish I had bought more vegetables, wish I had taken the air fryer; it’s at 6:13PM (for real, one minute after I started writing this — I have the timestamp to prove it) when maybe in her head she asks me “do we still have asparagus?” and “will you make some?” but instead of radioing through the walkie talkies we bought to chat from different floors without yelling, she texts me about the NASA spacecraft that’s about to crash into an asteroid (on purpose); it’s when, in an hour or so, I’ll watch a collision 6 million miles away from earth over a bowl of leftover pasta while she watches 3 miles away from me over a meal of I won’t know what; it’s when I’ll want to ask but don't; it’s when an asteroid 6 million miles away gets knocked a little further from (or closer to) the other asteroid it orbits.
Jacob Ginsberg (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and bird guy from Philadelphia whose work can be found in HAD, jmww, and other cool journals.
Photo by Adam Ginsberg.