Pluto’s Ode To Charon

Another rewrite because TopTweetTuesday are having a day of poems about moons without using the word moon or lunar and preferably being about an unmentionable other that our own unmentionable. I'm not using Twitter anymore, but will be sharing this on BlueSky instead. The photo is from wikimedia commons. The original of this is still on here. Maybe 2020. 
 

I churn and churn,

a vanilla coldness that bleeds its nitrogen

in dark lines carved deep now

into my own white plains.

Its pulse sets the strange haze

of my atmosphere, and

here the dazzle of my azure sky,

so blue that it promises oceans of warmth,

instead, beguiles with the dark shine of a first lie.

And you, my wordless companion, 

twist, trapped with me in nightsong

of tidal dance. Every turn, I admit again,

I don't know why I am so capricious,

that I would unshackle you,

if I could, from this belt of ice,

to the liberty of any other galaxy,

where their worlds might be so lampful

that they shimmer with daybright,

yet it is impossible -

when in this hinterland, my winterglow,

unstarred, as I am, 

you are my only light to see my way by.