by Manuela Amiouny
Content warnings: death, grief
On the world we left behind, we would bury our dead.
Tati used to tell me the stories
of bodies folded in the earth,
& cemeteries blooming with chrysanthemums.
Nothing like what I could do for her when she died,
when I dropped her off—somewhere around Saturn.
Few of us remember funeral rites beyond
leaving rings of Loved Ones around moons,
like gleaming pebbles to map the way backwards in the Cosmos.
Our starships were built to fly onwards,
despite the slowly shrinking Sun. The future is still lightyears away &
I have so much I need to remember until then
How was it having a sky over your head?
Thinking the stars were so far away?
Shouldn’t our grief be lighter to carry,
out of reach from gravity?
MANUELA AMIOUNY (she/her) is an emerging writer with a passion for science fiction and the speculative. She is currently studying to become an aviation and space lawyer and lives in Montreal, Canada with her cat, Maamoul. She can be found on Instagram at @manureads.
Graveyard Orbits can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 5.2.
