Why do some planets get so many moons?

the juvenile Earth sighed to his mother.

And why is mine so far away?

With craters and a dark side?

Well, said his mother, who saw her son

lamenting pithy worries. He did not deserve to spiral.

He is an orbiter who orbits. His perception

skewed by the scale on which light accelerates.

You were once moonlets upon

moonlets that could not weather

your thermosphere nor stratosphere

running tides, blasting bite

size things to the ether.

They left you giblets of

dinosaur in your mantle.You

crusted with no tether.

You are free-range, re-cycled

wind-dusted storms which

end in sprouting heathers.

Son, you are your own most

precious resource, admire

your moon from afar.

Those other planets are first

second and fourth in line to drop

into the Sun. Their moons pull

no tides. They are counting on

crashing into the planet they call home.

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Swati Sudarsan is from Michigan. She works in global health research during the day, and writes in the margins of her life. Swati received a Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry, and is an attendee of the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop. Her work can be found in So to Speak Journal, Drizzle Review, Gertrude Press, Dead Skunk Magazine, Let's Stab Caesar, and The Adroit Journal. She can be found on IG and Twitter as @booksnailmail