Ring of Saturn

I’ve never met the person in my passenger seat, but 

she smiles when I refuse her offerings of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms.

"I Got Heaven" by Mannequin Pussy comes on the radio 

and we sing along like we know the words.  

We’re going 45 on the interstate and 

the cops behind us are all corpses already.

We laugh at their misfortune, but they mock us. 

“Why would anyone want to be alive lately? 

These two women just don’t make sense.” 

The cops are crashing their cars into oil rigs and 

going up in beautiful fireworks. 

Gaea has my hand in hers and is kissing it, 

each time telling me she loves me like she is incapable of love.

We admire the planets we shouldn’t be able to see in the sky, 

the ships sailing between stars that can’t be there.

She loves the way Saturn’s rings look. 

Once upon a time, the Earth had rings, too. 

Saturn and Earth must have been lesbians, then, and married.

Gaea’s hand is soft, cracked, and warm, like

she’s been out working in the earth. She 

tells me she has a tea garden, where she 

grows saffron and silver tip and brews yellow tea. 

She kisses me on the mouth and 

tells me she hopes I see in her what she sees in me, 

which is nothing, and that she has to leave now. 

I pull over to the side of the road, and watch her 

until she vanishes behind saw-glass and rocks. 

I hope we never meet again.

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Viviane Fae-Moss (she/her/hers) is a young poet, baker, musician, and storyteller hoping to make a name for herself in the world of writing. She has had her work published previously in Sexy Grammatical Errors and Main Squeeze. Viviane hails from the creative writing program at Southern Oregon University.