Editors’ note: The title of this piece includes subscript letters that cannot be reproduced in our heading settings; here’s how it should appear: (FG+FD+FM+FB) =
Assistant Editor Kate Jayroe: There’s an awe-inspiring scope to this miCRo. Cosmic wonder and familial love are bridged by a melodic, clever lullaby. This loving and poignant mingling of the calculable and incalculable lift the reader skyward!
Listen to Macuaga read the story:
(FG+FD+FM+FB) =
“Look, Mama!”
My daughter lifts her bouncy ball high over her head, small shoulders framing her grin. With a flourish, she smacks it down, and the rubber sphere strikes our driveway with impressive force, bouncing once, twice, three times before it buoys like a cut balloon, slips from Earth’s failing gravity, and wafts inexorably toward the massive new eye in our sky.
“Wow!” I clap.
She hops and snags the ball, singing, “F-gee plus F-dee plus F-em plus F-bee equals M-D-squared-R over D-T-squared!” Projectile motion as we knew it. The calculable, imaginable universe. My heart crumples at remembering the sweet nights I cradled her, the laws of physics our lullabies. “F-gee equals M-gee . . . E equals V-over-U . . .” I believed in them as deeply as I did the gentle heat of her body.
Our feet leave the soil now, rising above the marigolds we planted in the spring, and I reach for her. Her father is up there already; we waved goodbye this morning to the soles of his shoes. Like many, he rejoiced when The Pull began. God wants us to be angels! Right or wrong, science alone couldn’t tether us.
All around us people sob, laugh, whoop, reaching for our planet even as they’re torn away. I simply hold my daughter, my arms wrapped around her arms wrapped around the ball. Our hair floats together like we’re at the bottom of Grandma’s pool, weightless and quiet as we drift. Moonward, skyward, sunward, heavenward, with just the ghosts of our equations on our lips.
M.E. Macuaga is a Japanese Bolivian storyteller and escape room addict whose diverse work can be found now/soon in HAD, Epiphany, The Seventh Wave, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oyster River Pages, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her communities include Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Tin House, and Storyknife. Read more: curiousstoryprods.com & @memi_writes (IG).
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