Comet
When I answered my father, “A ball of ice, dust, and gas orbiting the sun elliptically,” he was most my father then— he 40, me 9 and momentarily hooked at perigee: he knew I was close but that I’d swing miles away, only to swing back. Tiring. If I must be engineered this way, let me smash into the Earth. Let the staggering glow of impact be my apology.