Mercury and Pluto

Mercury is closest to the Sun and its solar-scorched surface is blue and silver and gold and brown in swirls and streaks of colors dappled with craters and its orbit is faster than any other planet and its year is swifter than any other planet and its atmosphere is non-existent and even if we could breathe there we would still need SPF 10,000,000 because of our proximity to the Sun and it is the smallest planet now that Pluto isn’t a planet and Pluto is sheets of red and gray and its orbit is wide out in the outer reaches of space and it touches the darkness just as Mercury touches the flame and some people think its surface is made from frozen nitrogen and some people think Pluto gets jealous now that it’s not a planet but even so I think Mercury and Pluto are friends and every millennia or so they ditch the solar system and grab drinks at the Milky Way and talk about black hole bureaucracy and about the Sun’s temperamental flares and about maybe adopting a moon someday and they’ll go home ruddy and tilted on their axes and promise to keep in touch and it’s so hard to keep in touch all the way across the system from each other but they always do they always do and they wonder what’s stopping them from going out together more but secretly each worries that the other doesn’t like them as much and that it’s a one-sided friendship when in reality it’s so much more than that and it’s just that it’s so hard to keep in touch all the way across the solar system and the days become years and the years become decades and the decades become centuries and the centuries become millennia and oh before they know it it’s that time again and they reach out to each other again and head deeper into the galaxy together and between them it’s like no time has passed.

And the Milky Way watches in amusement. They’re back already. These little planets have no idea how young they truly are.