They say Uranus is in Aries—
expect to feel handcuffed.
I feel the steely circle
like a crowd peering into an abyss.
Heat could dissolve them.
My mind is glacial.
I can’t confess to darkness,
to starless sky.
Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing
balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn
nuclear fuel and radiate starlight.
To divine there must be light.
Nights collide and deliver ice.
Can I live on ice?
The coldest brown dwarf
has a temperature between minus 54 and 9 degrees.
I watch the sun sink, the sky’s pale oblivion.
The edge evaporates.
*Title and italicized lines taken from NASA Space News redorbit.com
Rachel Sahaidachny holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Butler University. She was a finalist in the 2016 Radar Poetry Coniston Prize, awarded first prize in the Wabash Watershed Indiana Poetry Awards. She is co-editor of Not Like The Rest of Us: An Anthology of Contemporary Indiana Writers, and former poetry editor of Booth: A Journal. Recent writing has been published in South Dakota Review, The Southeast Review, Radar Poetry, Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, Red Paint Hill, NUVO, Indiana Humanities and others. She lives in Indianapolis and is former Executive Director of the Indiana Writers Center, a non-profit dedicated to fostering a vibrant writing community in Indiana. She now serves as Executive Director of The Big Silence Foundation, opening up the conversation on mental health.
Get in touch at www.rachelsahaidachny.com