What if planets grew on trees?

Towering trunks made of time,

a thousand histories yet to

be lived, all creaking under

the weight of the fruit blossoming

in this celestial orchard.

 

How long did God peruse this

garden that had the stomach

for infinite Edens

before he found the perfect

planets for our solar system?

What mattered to Him most?

The colour? The shape? The way they

looked lined up in a sequence?

 

It’s easy to envision Saturn

seducing Him with her jewellery,

the twinkling sounds it makes as

she dances, and Jupiter was

robust enough to make

the universe look rich,

as if it meant something.

Pluto is more of a mystery.

I’d wager it was pity that drove

its inclusion, or perhaps

there was something charming

about its prematurity-

a seed lost amongst a harvest.

 

And now that they have been strung

together like baubles on branches

or bulbs in streetlamps,

should we worry about God getting hungry?

I imagine he would go for us first,

as we give off a viridian sheen

reminiscent of a freshly polished apple.

He’d bite into us, hear the crunch

of tectonic plates (an earthquake

that couldn’t be truer to the name)

and the sea would dribble down his

chin and lace his beard with salt.

He’d wipe this away with a hand

that crosses lightyears between his

waist and his face, before polishing

us off and tossing the core into a

holy dustbin, along with packaging

for heavenly shaving foam and

those Adam and Eve prototypes

that came out with too many limbs.

There, the planet’s remains would

rot away and be swarmed by

buzzing stars with paper-thin wings.

It’s the smell of the magma

seeping out of the corpse they’re

attracted to; magma and the

stench from teeth marks

left in landfills.

 

 

By Emma Brade