Saudade
by Cassandra Khaw
They asked me where was home and I told them it was the space between your arms and the longitude of your spine, every vertebra mapped and memorized, more familiar even that the star maps that they'd engraved into the whorls of my brain and the whirl of my pulse. Home, I tell them, is the way you cup my neck and the way you kiss my cheek, the fit of your hips and my name on your lips. Home is you and only you, can only be you, although galaxies might line themselves like arguments between us.
The officials--effulgent colors, scarcely corporeal--confer in flashes of iridescence. Was it red for amenability, and turquoise for indecision? Or pustulant green for comprehension? They stutter between pigments and I pin my breath to the firmament of my ribs. Melody sluices from their translation boxes. I catch words out of order: dissent, despair, distrust.
Please, I think. Please.
"You don't have a visa appropriate to the planet."
"I know."
They cycle between hues: steel to starlight to shades of amber, pale as your hair, as the first tankard of beer you brewed in our basement on Mars. "You are a risk."
"I know." I catch the urge to beg and hold it between my teeth, cringing at the thought of being turned away. All I can think is: please, please, please. "But I need to go home."
Their incandescence ebbs, fades to gray. And I think they're tasting you on the curve of an electron, the way your name means home, means safe, means everything I hold true.
