"To the Moon & Back" • Savage Garden (by Brittany Thomas)

What if I said my name over and over until it made more sense, until my father’s name didn’t sound like a loose boulder hurling itself straight over the cliff’s edge, until it sounded like mine and like someone who drives the getaway car. 

My love is cratered like the moon and somewhere on the light side I went planting trees. A tomorrow with a forest on the edge of the lunar sea – the most ambitious plan I’ve ever had, my love can sprout something evergreen, my love can flip off the sun. My love is on the phone with my anxiety hatching an escape plan. 

What if I don’t remember the way back, what if all my maps were written in crayon on the back of a cocktail napkin. One summer I was obsessed with aperol spritzes and one summer it was gin and one summer it was whatever you put in my hand, what if all my maps are just daydreams. I swear I could see the future in the bottom of a glass: we were raising our flag over the treetops, of course we were, we were taught to claim this way.

You asked me if the moon has a sunrise, so I google sunrise on the moon and we watch a timelapse of the ugliest morning we’ve ever seen. Wait until you see the trees, I say, I promise, it looks like home. And then we’ll build a treehouse and watch the earthrise from our kitchen through a perfect picture window. So what if neither of us knows what a hammer looks like, we both know how to swing. What if I say your name over and over until it sounds like benediction. Only we know how hallowed the ground can be.  

Brittany Thomas is a queer writer who was born and raised in upstate New York and currently lives in London. Her writing appears in Bullshit Lit, Fifth Wheel Press’s Come Sail Away anthology, JAKE, Scrawl Place, and The Daily Drunk Magazine. You can find her online @britomatic.