Moons of Jupiter.

Poems.

Moons of Jupiter

I.

I never asked for this kingdom,

yet here it is, a quiet tumult of stone and gas,

silent except for the distant rush of Jupiter's voice.

It is not a god, but it believes it is

and what is belief but the force that pulls us

toward what we can never touch?

Europa, you are quiet as a wound,

your seas frozen in prayer,

your salt and water like an elegy for a world

that never was. I touch your surface

with my mind and hear nothing back.

It is cold there, colder than distance.

II.

Io burns with fury,

volcanic, restless, as if

the planet's anger had found a voice,

a way to speak its molten song.

In the night sky, Io is a bright wound,

a burst of flame against the darkness,

its suffering beautiful because we do not live there.

Who could endure such fire

and not be destroyed?

But Io continues,

burning as if the heart of it

is made of loss.

III.

Callisto, what did you see in the first darkness

that made you so still?

Your craters are soft, as if the universe

has forgotten your name,

yet you remember everything.

Ice is your memory,

the deep record of your suffering,

etched in every frozen scar.

You are the quiet one,

but I hear you,

the long sigh of a body that has borne too much.

IV.

Ganymede, larger than a moon should be,

you outsize yourself,

a burden of rock and light,

your gravity pulling us into your orbit

as if love could be like this,

a vast and silent pull.

Yet there is no comfort in your embrace,

only the cold certainty of distance.

The poets wrote songs to you once,

but I have forgotten them.

Your beauty has no place here.

V.

And all the others, unnamed,

too small to remember or too far to see—

they circle too, part of the vastness,

each one a fragment of something

we will never know.

There is no end to this turning.

We are bound, as they are bound,

to the great silence that keeps us.

Even the smallest among them knows

what it means to be held

and not touched.

VI.

Jupiter hums,

a low, endless song that the moons cannot hear,

though they are made of its music.

It is the song of things turning,

of orbits that never break,

of longing that never ends.

Jupiter does not speak.

It only listens,

and the moons, like all of us,

do what they must,

moving endlessly in the dark.

---

Pica

I was always told

what the body needs, it seeks—

but this is not hunger

as you would understand it.

The mouth takes in dirt,

its bitter metallic edge,

not to satisfy,

but to speak to the emptiness

that will not answer.

In the garden, I kneel

with my hands in the soil.

The earth smells of rain and iron,

and still I cannot stop.

I lift stones to my lips

as if they might tell me

something I’ve forgotten.

There are things I consume

that leave no trace,

yet the body remembers:

a strand of hair,

a sliver of paint—

like the voices

I heard once in dreams

but never understood.

I say it is a longing,

but it is more like silence.

And I wait for the day

when nothing will be enough

to fill me.

---

Sisyphus, reversing.

Imagine Sisyphus descending,

not with the rock above him,

but beneath, rolling down

the slope he has mastered,

a quiet unwinding of effort.

The stone, now obedient,

moves by its own weight,

as if the mountain has softened,

as if gravity has shifted

to let him rest.

At first, he does not trust it,

the ease with which the burden

rolls away, a quiet betrayal

of the endless task. He reaches

for the familiar struggle,

the steady pull against the incline,

but his hands grasp air,

and the mountain releases him.

Downward he goes,

feet light as the rock

gathers speed behind him,

no longer his to control,

and in the absence of the climb,

he feels the absence of meaning,

the loss of that daily fight

that once gave shape

to his endless days.

What is the point of release,

if there is nothing left to push,

nothing to lean against

in the long, burning light?

The gods laugh, perhaps,

not with cruelty, but with pity,

for now he must confront

the hollow space

where his purpose once lived.

He reaches the bottom,

where the rock rests,

silent and still. It asks nothing

of him anymore. And there,

in the quiet, he wonders:

if the struggle made him whole,

who is he now without it?

The absence of effort is its own

kind of burden, a strange

freedom that weighs

heavier than the stone.

He sits beside it,

unsure if this is peace

or just another kind of punishment.

For in the letting go,

he finds no answers,

only the echo of what it meant

to push and fail and rise again.

Now, in the stillness,

he must learn to live

with the silence that follows

the end of the climb.