This week’s episodes are guest hosted by Diannely Antigua.

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Diannely Antigua, and this is The Slowdown.

The moon is about 238,855 miles away from Earth, which is roughly 30 Earths lined up end to end. But moonlight only takes about 1.3 seconds to reach us. The distance feels impossible, and yet the light arrives almost instantly. It makes me think about how love can work like that, too. How it can stretch across time and space and still arrive right when we need it.

Even though I’m nearing my 40s, my mother still texts me goodnight every night. She always says, “Te amo hasta la luna y de vuelta.” I love you to the moon and back.

But when I was in my early 20s, I didn’t appreciate the nightly texts. I wanted to feel independent. I didn’t want to answer to anyone. I’d get annoyed and not respond right away, which would only spark a series of worried messages, followed by my own frustration.

Almost 20 years later, there are nights when she forgets to text me. And now, it’s me who starts to panic. I run through the worst-case scenarios. Maybe her blood pressure is too low. Maybe she slipped and fell. That’s when I start sending the worried texts.

And when she finally responds, it’s always simple. “I’m okay, corazón,” she’ll say. She fell asleep on the couch watching a telenovela. And my worry melts away.

I realize we’ve switched places. How the care I once resisted is now the care I offer. How love keeps moving between us, even as it changes shape.

There’s something about that phrase, “to the moon and back,” that I don’t think is really about distance. I think it’s about return. About knowing that no matter how far we go, someone will find their way back to us. Or maybe it’s about imagining a love that doesn’t have to come back at all. A love that keeps going, that builds something, in that space between here and there.

Today’s poem plays with that idea. It takes that familiar phrase and reimagines it. What would it mean to stay there, on the moon? To remain in that space of distance and possibility?

i love you to the moon &
by Chen Chen

not back, let’s not come back, let’s go by the speed of 
queer zest & stay up 
there & get ourselves a little 
moon cottage (so pretty), then start a moon garden 

with lots of moon veggies (so healthy), i mean 
i was already moonlighting 
as an online moonologist 
most weekends, so this is the immensely 

logical next step, are you 
packing your bags yet, don’t forget your 
sailor moon jean jacket, let’s wear 
our sailor moon jean jackets while twirling in that lighter,

queerer moon gravity, let’s love each other 
(so good) on the moon, let’s love 
the moon        
on the moon

"i love you to the moon &" by Chen Chen. Used by permission of the poet.