There was a pink supermoon on lesbian visibility day and I asked
My girlfriend to go to the moon with me
She wanted to stay home and watch Working Girl
(she loves Sigourney Weaver so much I sometimes think I should be jealous)
But she said sure, we can go see the pink moon
We took our bikes
It was a long ride, and on the way up she asked me
(asked the universe, I guess)
Why April 26? Why not wait four days and let us have Walpurgisnacht?
Do you really want to enforce that stereotype? I asked, and she looked at me
With that puzzled look, head tilted, lips in an o
What stereotype?
That lesbians are witches, I answered, and I looked straight ahead then
I wasn’t mad, it was just a stretch of sky that required
All my concentration and pedaling hard
She laughed and said But aren’t you a witch?
And I didn’t have an answer to that
When we got to the moon we found the alien queen from Aliens
Right there in the sea of tranquility
Hello, she said, I hope you are not here to fight.
I’m tired and it’s my birthday.
We wished her a happy birthday and she still seemed uneasy so
My girlfriend got down off her bike and said
We are not here to fight you. It’s lesbian day
Of visibility today, but I wanted to be
Invisible
I stared at her then, because she hadn’t
Told me any of this on earth. I guess
Being on the moon makes you more honest or something
I brought a picnic, I told them, stepping off my bike and
Opening the basket
The alien queen slithered closer, and I think she was smiling
(I don’t know how to tell)
Is that cake? she asked
Yes, I told her. I’m sorry I don’t have candles, but we can sing
And she said, That’s just as well. You wouldn’t want me
To blow them out. My saliva is as caustic as my blood
So my girlfriend and I held hands and sang
Happy Birthday To You from a safe distance
And when we got to the third line we paused and
She asked the alien queen, What’s your name?
And she said, You can call me Stella
So we sang, Happy birthday, dear Stella
And wished the alien queen many returns of the day
We stayed for a while, exploring the pink moon with Stella
Eventually I remembered my manners and said Well,
I suppose we should be going
And I swear to you I think Stella looked disappointed
But all she said was Yes, probably good to get home before
Daylight
And I wondered to myself how a xenomorph knows
About the day-night cycle on earth
It was an easy ride home, except for the part
When we burned up reentering the atmosphere
It tickled, both the burning and the way our
Atoms rearranged themselves and our bodies
Reformed, newer and pink like the moon, but mostly the same
And afterward we didn’t talk much about it
But every year on April 26 we eat cake and sing
Happy Birthday to Stella
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Annika Barranti Klein lives in a tiny apartment in Los Angeles with her family and a lot of books. She writes stories and poems about ordinary girls in extraordinary circumstances (and sometimes vice versa), some of which have been or are forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fusion Fragment, The Future Fire, and Weird Horror. The full list, along with where else to find her, is at annikaobscura.com. |