Once upon the august moon, we lived

and loved Earth.

 

We’re lucky, you say, as you trace Cassiopeia for the last time

with a sigh curled around your lips. You already miss this.

 

We tasted her intestines and found them too bitter, overflowing

with loss. Leaving is the thing that makes sense when all you’re left

is fingers broken around empty spoons.

 

I hold your hand as we say goodbye to the only place

we called home.

 

We learn to cultivate crops in zero gravity and all we taste

is the Aegean salt and the absence of olive oil.

 

What is the taste of dreams when your future is beyond

your stars? you ask with your belly filled with sour cherries and a pearl

of nostalgia that digs in my thigh, where your shoulder rests on my lap.

 

This planet is tasteless, you say. The sun doesn’t bite and the air

doesn’t sky anymore.

 

Once you told me that the people important to you are your home but

I don’t know how to plant in your spine the view of the Milky Way

from our porch the first time we made love.

 

Tell me again, what is the taste of not going back?

 

We are alive because we left, but I know that we left

because we were alive and sometimes hope tastes

of our lips locked together.

© 2020 Eva Papasoulioti