My twin says that it feels like a trillion years since they’ve been home. I correct Lucifer and say that the most recent scientific and mathematical data indicate it was only 13.8 billion years ago that our sweet, dense world expanded, ballooned, and we were separated.
Lucifer argues that regardless of what I think, our world did not “ballooooooonnnn,” but exploded. I have learned not to argue with Lucifer. Not that I’m frightened of them; it’s just exhausting. Instead, in these moments when they start to rant, I see us as children. While I babbled incoherently, Lucifer, always more inquisitive and intuitive, created acoustic waves filling dark spaces with gossamer filaments and the fundamental heartbeat, a center.
And there, in that center, the rub between my twin and our father began. Father wanted the inside and the outside filled with more and more of whatever it was they were spinning. Lucifer joyfully complied, creating among other things, the gossamer wings of angels who eventually hovered about them, like my father did, weeping because, as it was then, so it will always be, we can only take so much grace, so much peace.
Behind the gossamer tapestry, our parents grew weary of one another, until what sounded like a door slamming one last time. The Big Bang. And our mother moved away from us: 93 million miles away. Then Lucifer refused to comply with Father. Refused to perform.
It is a convenient lie to say my twin was kicked out of heaven, as it was no longer heaven without Mother. No. The prophet Isaiah’s thoughts came closest to what happened. Writing that Lucifer wanted to ascend above the stars, the stars they made. The stars traveled to find our mother.
I begged Lucifer to stay. I am not like my father, who can be despondent, cold, distant, made of the stuff of our old world. He now wanders from galaxy to galaxy, he says, looking for his Lucifer, but I know he is looking to feel that vibration again.
It’s been approximately 13.8 million years and 1 day, and I still love Lucifer. Sometimes, like today, I hear Lucifer yell through an acoustic wormhole, “Exploded!” And then on a lyre, salvaged from ruins, they sing. Words had become necessary elements of time and distance, and these words speak of love, but are not love. Just a tune to piss off Dad.
And me. I wait, because out there, somewhere, is the scientist, the mathematician, the physicist who sits at her desk, who studies her charts and what was once our heaven. She has her own slamming doors, and she will explain to me, if no one else, what happened. And if Lucifer is correct, which they are too often, the mathematician’s equation will factor in the viscosity of grace and desire, and how love explodes.
