On Your Saturn Return
Olivia Dunn
28
Every thirty years or so, that planet with the ring around its head
is back in the spot it was when you were born. Try to picture it as it
might look in space: rust colored and cream curdled and swirling,
bigger across than nine earths. Don’t picture it as a Styrofoam ball,
crushed by a soccer cleat in the backseat of your parents’ car. Don’t
imagine it drooping off of a wire hanger, attached with dental floss.
This is the opposite of that. This is metallic hydrogen and crystal-
lized ammonia and wind speeds of a thousand miles per hour. This
is supposed to be bigger than you are; this is supposed to make you
bigger. The movement of the outer planets, infinitesimal day by day,
has finally accumulated into something. Now you’re older. An adult.
Or nothing. Or you don’t believe in hokum.
I am trying to be better, not just older. Last night, walking
home in the dark, I looked up into the dark and thought: one day I
should see a real night sky. In my mind, even the Milky Way could
stand improving. If only this, if only that. If only no light pollution,
every star visible—then maybe my life would really begin.
But standing here in my frost-covered yard, shouldn’t it be
enough to imagine? Deep above me, roiling and churning away?
Coming, however, slowly, trailing hundreds of moons and moonlets?
Shouldn’t my imagination be used for something better than wishing
myself away?