Exactly 299,792,458 Meters Per Second

On the screen, shadows and bones. My son's
right arm. Radius in two. Displaced. Separated.
In the ER bed, he curls around the misshapen
limb, his skeleton a tiny crescent. Someone's
cranium is projected on the wall in another
room, glaring at us just like the full moon does.
Has it been a skull up above all along? And was
anyone cradling that child until he found his mother?
These questions haunt us, but there is within a secret
glow, exposed by x-ray like a telescope aimed down at
night sky. I don't know where luminosity comes
from, but I've watched a brilliant mechanism
heal the body. Brightness fuses to brightness. Beams
reach for one another across the space between.

- Carolee Bennett (from Contrary Magazine)

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