Kimberly Ramos

Essay as an Aporia

(After Sumita Chakraborty’s Essay on Joy)

A star is brightest when viewed from the corner of the eye. To see a god swimming in his indulgence one must not look directly at him, but somewhere off to the side. It is something about the design of the retina, that silvery nebula stuffed in the back of the socket. An eye, when dissected, yields many parts, all of which fit in a fist. Heidegger writes, We are too late for the gods and too early for Being. All light is old when it reaches the eye. All images that reach the eye have already dissolved. I put my hand in the light but the light has moved on. If light had eyes, it would see everything instantaneously. It would jump from the sun to my palm. This is true. This is physics. The gods are gone but maybe a holy bone still explodes in my eyes. Maybe a bit of a god’s light still tumbles down the side of the mountain. A boy once told me lightning was inefficient in the way it cut and curled and arced. If he had designed lightning, it would hit the trees and roofs in a straight, vertical line. This, he said, is good design. The light through the window laughed at his empty hands. Heidegger writes, To head toward a star—this only. At night I sit in the grass and wish for gravity to dissolve and hurl me from earth’s breast. I want to touch young light and hold a photon in my fist. I want to see a star swimming in its gods. A knife of lightning lodged in my eye. The gods are physics but maybe a boy still yields many parts. I am too early for forgetting and too late for looking. I am instantaneously inefficient. My path is not straight but a jagged arm holding the sky. A star is brightest when viewed from the corner of the eye.

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Kimberly Ramos is an undergraduate of philosophy and creative writing at Truman State University. She enjoys playing ukulele and tabletop games in her free time. Her work has appeared in Watershed Review, Underground, Whale Road Review, and The Lindenwood Review, among others.