satellite/parasite

A poem about the fear of taking the next step

Sara Gorske (she/her) is a graduate student, yoga instructor, and poet currently based in Southern California. She received her BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University, with a minor in the History of Art, and is pursuing her PhD at the California Institute of Technology. Her debut chapbook, I Left a Piece of Me in a Dream and Now I Don’t Fit Together Anymore, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2022.

This poem originally appeared in Sara’s chapbook, I Left a Piece of Me in a Dream and Now I Don't Fit Together Anymore from Bottlecap Press.

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Your teeth gleam when you smile,
a mouthful of moon-rocks
forged from the death
of a galaxy so distant,
I can only imagine it, shrouded
from me by wisps of stars’
afterlives. When you smile,
do you not await a meteor,
bulleting through the atmosphere
you’ve left enough gaps in
for anyone to barge through
and gouge out craters the size
of your overgrown heart?

I keep my lips sealed shut.
I am the station that orbits you,
knowing I could touch down as I did before,
knowing also
that on my last trip,
the indentation from my landing
bruised us both. I am Apollo,
and you are Daphne, yet you still
offer your laurels up
and smile.

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