Celestial mechanics of the kitchen

The teaspoon turns in the cup and the sugar orbits like a homespun galaxy.

Everything turns in here: the water down the drain, the blades of the extractor fan, the fly around the pear, the two of us around the table in ellipses of habit.

They say the Moon drifts away four centimetres a year. We drift apart too sometimes, a centimetre per argument, and then gravity — the coffee, the soup, the cold — pulls us back into the usual orbit.

Let no astronomer study us: they wouldn't understand how two bodies this small hold up so much sky between the fridge and the window.