Eating in Orbit
breakfasting in a solar marble haze,
tearing open silver sacks of freeze-dried dinners.
we could have tasted every fruit on earth
and still we'd long to gorge ourselves on space dust,
could have feasted like romans and begged for some bitterness
scraped from a canister or distilled into thick white pills.
the moon would shatter our molars like a nightmare,
mars might stick to the sides of your tongue
if tried the wrong side of midnight.
midnight, what a concept.
Somewhere along the line
we stopped using coffee to tell the time,
lost the novelty of catching every square of chocolate
in our mouths, two minutes after we'd thrown it.
silence for supper, earth for dessert,
and lunch at the entrance to an airlock.
George Neame is a publisher of medical journals based in London, but recent years he has lived in Yorkshire, Dublin and Tennessee. His poetry has previously appeared in Acumen, Antiphon, the Moth, and Ink and Sweat & Tears. In his spare time, he enjoys long walks, board games and exceptionally strong coffee.