I read the letter you sent me again and again
Till the words lose all their meaning and become your name
They leap off the page and revolve around me
You are my sun, I am theirs
A pressed flower falls out of the envelope
And I think about you drenched in sunlight
At the park, tearing this sheet of paper out of a notebook
And littering my solar system with planets
You seal the envelope, but what you don’t realise
Is that you tilted your head and so
The lavender sprig you stuck in your hair is now my binary star
We revolve around each other, but the universe is expanding
And all the planets in the world cannot bring us together again

I’m not good with beginnings and so I’ll jump straight into the matter
You say we are stars destined to rotate around each other
That we are meant to always look on from afar and remain content
I say, screw that
Screw your planets, and your stars, and your science, and your convoluted metaphors
For me, it is simple
When are you coming home?

Tejashree Murugan (she/her) is a writer and student of biotechnology at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Her work has been published in LiveWire Magazine, The Soap Box Press, and WomenTech Network, and is forthcoming in The Bitchin' Kitsch, in:cite journal, and Ethel Zine. In her free time, she enjoys painting, embroidery, and working on her novel about a group of time traveling thieves.

Follow Tejashree on Instagram @earth2tj.

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