The Music of the Spheres
Nora Nadjarian

1. Disco Ball

The smallest and fastest-moving planet, did you ever think you’d get so close to the sun? I said your name over and over like lyrics of a pop song as I moved to the music, my poodle hair covering my eyes, my body writhing out of itself. I was discovering so many planets, my life, my first love, you were my song, and what I remember as the disco ball shone purple and blue and silver, I thought this will never end. Galileo, Galileo, these discoveries.


2. Love Is Blind

A young couple stand locked in an embrace, so close together that they can’t see.

Years later, she lies next to him in bed at night, thinking. How I hate you. How I used to love you. How could I possibly love you? Die. How can I live? How dark everything is, like grief. She remembers a scene in a film, where a cloud slices across the moon, and the man slits the woman’s eye with a razor.


3. Blue Ball

The boys were fighting over the ball. It’s mine, no mine, the ruddy-cheeked one so passionately defending, the whole thing an attack. It’s mine, no mine, until the punch came right in the other boy’s eye. He let out the howl of an animal, a dog, a new language, and they fought with their sweat, with their heart, as the ball rolled into the street, unseen, uncertain, their miniature world, travelling towards the future.

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