Science tells us collapse
is inevitable—stars
destined to burn themselves
out with their own
luminosity, too pure
to sustain a body
through all that empty
but space was supposed
to be temporary, without
the gravity of consequence
like when you left me
for another planetary
body, life on Mars red
and warm, and I preferred
the moon, the way no one
could hear me scream
and the atmosphere
smelled of gunpowder
but you returned, said
I was a constellation
always calling you home
and how we orbited
each other, convinced
discovery was a way to love
despite the loneliness
of space, the science
fiction where life exists
on other planets if only
we abandon what we have
in order to search the expanse
like the void between
our bodies in bed, the silent
gulf over breakfast
we fill with I love you
because it is easy to covet
what is doomed, what will
inevitably combust, absorb
the Earth’s many hurts.
—
Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press), and three poetry chapbooks. She is an Assistant Professor at Bridgewater State University. You can follow her on Twitter at @SF_Montgomery
Photography by: Xavier Coiffic
