{"id":5711,"date":"2025-12-01T23:02:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T03:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/?page_id=5711"},"modified":"2025-12-01T23:02:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T03:02:52","slug":"orbit-ghiradella","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/fall-2025-digital-lit\/orbit-ghiradella\/","title":{"rendered":"Newton’s Orbit \u2014 Tarik James Ghiradella \u2014 Fall 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Where Knowing Resides by Devon Balwit<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Newton’s Orbit<\/span><\/h1>\n

Tarik James Ghiradella<\/p>\n

It was in a place where silence had weight and memory was conditional. Sometimes it went missing without a sound. But then he saw it again. A small, pulsing blur near the edge of the belt. Moving just enough to notice.<\/span><\/p>\n

He adjusted the lens. Logged the position. Faint. Faster than last week. Different. Inside, a light blinked on. Then off. She was awake.<\/span><\/p>\n

He hadn\u2019t named it after her. Too obvious. Too much like begging for a miracle. Or worse\u2014a sign. But sometimes he wondered if it knew her name anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

He waited, but she didn\u2019t come to the door. Didn\u2019t call his name.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year she\u2019d sit with him on clear nights. Wrapped in the quilt her mother made. She\u2019d name the stars wrong on purpose, just to make him laugh. Now she wandered. Mostly inside. Sometimes out.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019d found her barefoot in the snow once, looking up, whispering under her breath.<\/span><\/p>\n

The object blinked again. JD472-b. He had cataloged it before she started fading. It had strayed slightly from its pattern. Suddenly un-anchored, as if it had forgotten what it was.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He scribbled a note beside the coordinates. Then scratched it out, looked back through the lens and then again at his notes. The numbers kept shifting. Faster. And that was wrong. Movement like this should take months, even years. Not days. Not like this. It should have been steady, predictable. Yet each time he returned to the lens, the rock had stolen another fraction of speed\u2014sliding closer to the rim, as though some hidden hand were tugging it outward.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frost curled up the deck rail, the boards silvering under the moon. His breath clouded the eyepiece as he leaned in again. Still there. Dimming. Speeding away. Wobbling just slightly.<\/span><\/p>\n

He heard the rustle of her slippers on the kitchen tile. The light switched on again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCan you turn it off, please?\u201d he said, his eye still fixed to the scope. \u201cI need it as dark as possible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was almost too faint now.\u00a0 Falling up and behind the belt, like a child slipping out to the yard when no one noticed. Still visible. But barely.<\/span><\/p>\n

He reached for his pencil, then stopped. Let his hand rest above the page.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the quiet, he thought of the first time he saw it. Late October. She\u2019d been falling off to sleep on the couch, a candle burning on the sill. The scent of cedar and wax.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019d shouted then. Loud enough to wake her. Loud enough to feel like something had been discovered, named and claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n

She woke and smiled, got up and walked out to kiss him on the cheek.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it?\u201d She whispered, her voice so soft and delicate. \u201cYou found something?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He just nodded, eyes still fixed on the lens. She waited but after a moment went back inside. That was before the forgetting. Before he stopped calling out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He picked his hand up off the notebook,\u00a0 leaned back and peered to his side.<\/span><\/p>\n

She stood in the doorway now, quilt around her shoulders.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re still out here?\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He turned and spoke calmly, as if talking to a toddler. \u201cI\u2019m tracking something.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her eyes found the sky. For a moment she looked like herself again. The half-smile. The reflex to play.<\/span><\/p>\n

He waited for her to call Orion \u201c<\/span>the saucepan<\/span><\/i>,\u201d or to insist the Pleiades were \u201c<\/span>just a bunch of scattered crumbs someone spilled.<\/span><\/i>\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s drifting, isn\u2019t it? You can see it but you can\u2019t stop it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He froze. He hadn\u2019t told her. She couldn\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n

When he looked up, she was already walking back inside. Only a faint warmth remained where her hand had rested on the rail.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0* \u00a0 \u00a0 * \u00a0 \u00a0 *<\/span><\/p>\n

Three rows out he cut the engine and stared into the woods. Not because there wasn\u2019t a space closer, but because he wasn\u2019t ready to walk through those doors just yet. He sat and thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

The doctor, he remembered, had said the word last week. Softly. As if laying down a folded blanket: \u201c<\/span>Have you thought about hospice<\/span><\/i>?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He nodded like he understood. Like they were just talking next steps. But the truth was, he hadn\u2019t heard much after that. Just the hum of fluorescent lights and the way his wife sat quietly staring down at her shoes, as if she already knew.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hospice<\/span><\/i>. It echoed in his ears. It lingered and thinned leaving only the woods and space in front of him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But today wasn\u2019t a decision. That\u2019s what he told himself. Just information. Just learning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, the air smelled of hand sanitizer and wood polish. A small fountain burbled in the corner. A bowl of peppermints sat by the sign-in sheet.<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman at the desk had a soft perm and a voice like a nurse who loved to sing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIs this for your mother?\u201d she asked, reaching for a clipboard.<\/span><\/p>\n

He shook his head. \u201cNo. It\u2019s for my wife.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That gave her pause. Her hand stilled. Something flickered in her eyes\u2014surprise, sympathy, recalibration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d she said, and offered him the clipboard.<\/span><\/p>\n

He sat, staring at blanks: Diagnosis (if known), Mobility Level, Allergies. The pen didn\u2019t write at first. He pressed harder until the tip tore the paper. He thought of her handwriting, her lists on the fridge\u2014neat rows of groceries and errands. He couldn\u2019t imagine her name on these lines.<\/span><\/p>\n

A moment later, he slid it back across the desk, empty.\u00a0 She looked at him carefully.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay.\u201d She said, \u201cThen would you like to sit down with one of our nurses? She can walk you through what care here would look like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot today, I’m sorry.\u201d He said quickly. \u201cThis was just \u2026 to see what it involves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She nodded, though her eyes lingered. \u201cI understand. We\u2019re here whenever you\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the hallway, someone was humming Frank Sinatra. A door opened, and he caught a glimpse of a bed, a tray of untouched soup, a woman staring at the ceiling. He looked away quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three Coins in a Fountain<\/span><\/i>, he thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t stay long. Just enough to say he\u2019d come. Just enough to tell himself it was premature. When he got up to leave, the peppermint bowl was still there, waiting, as though it hadn\u2019t noticed anything at all. He folded the pamphlet before reaching the car.<\/span><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 \u00a0 *\u00a0 \u00a0 *<\/span><\/p>\n

He had first logged JD472-b five years ago. A minor Kuiper Belt object on a slow, erratic path beyond Neptune.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the rocks out there moved like clockwork, locked in ordered resonance with the outer planets. Tugged predictably by gravity and time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But this one kept sliding. Not wildly. Not alarmingly. Just\u2026 off. As if nudged once, long ago, and never corrected.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some will blame Neptune\u2019s interference, he thought. Others will whisper Planet Nine, that brute hiding in the dark, exerting invisible force.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or maybe it was venting. Trace gases shifting its aim, too faint to see, just enough to matter. He didn\u2019t know. It didn’t matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

He only knew that every so often JD472-b blinked where it shouldn\u2019t. And once\u2014only once\u2014it disappeared entirely. Not gone. Not vanished. Just\u2026unaccounted for. As if space had swallowed it, then released it again.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019d watched it for years. Not because it was important, but because it wasn\u2019t. Because it behaved like something fragile. Because even out there, past the maps, something could still slip.<\/span><\/p>\n

That night, he stayed at the telescope until his eyes burned. It didn\u2019t return. The scope gave him only stars in their endless obedience, sharp as nails in the black.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, the kitchen light flickered on again. He didn\u2019t call out. Didn\u2019t ask her to turn it off. He only sat there. Waiting. Just in case. Because sometimes, things come back around.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tarik Ghiradella<\/b> is a composer, drummer, and storyteller whose work bridges sound and narrative. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, he has recorded for Grammy-nominated artists and co-hosts The Composer\u2019s Studio podcast, where he explores the creative lives of fellow artists. Newton\u2019s Orbit marks his debut as a fiction writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

When not making art, <\/span>Devon Balwit<\/b> walks in all weather and edits for <\/span>Asimov Press<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Asterisk Magazine<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Works in Progress<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Back to issue<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Newton’s Orbit Tarik James Ghiradella It was in a place where silence had weight and memory was conditional. Sometimes it went missing without a sound. But then he saw Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7348,"featured_media":0,"parent":5625,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7348"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5711"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6045,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5711\/revisions\/6045"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}