Orbit Decay by Bella Chacha
30 lines
Issue 8, Summer 2025
We’ve circled this broken moon
for twelve hundred years—
not counting the two decades
when the nav system lied to us,
and we thought we were going somewhere.
You still hum in the shower chamber,
even though the water’s been sonic mist
for centuries.
I still trace the freckles on your shoulder
with a lightbeam
you installed when my fingers started shaking.
The reactor wheezes now.
Gravity’s fickle.
Our bones sing when we sleep too close to the walls.
You laugh like you did on Earth,
wild, wide-mouthed,
as if joy is the only law we follow.
Once, we dreamed of crashing
somewhere fertile,
growing roots where no one knew our names.
Now, we orbit. Still.
A slow decay around a planet
too cold to care.
But your hand finds mine
every seventh dawn.
You whisper:
“We don’t need landing.
We have flight.”
And I believe you.
Even when the stars forget us.
