The Galápagos Tortoise’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Galápagos tortoise can survive for a year without food or water.

I can hardly get through a day without tasting your words.

I siphon drops of your voice into a teaspoon

and sip on them before I go to bed.

Recently, when I wake up in the mornings I have a hard time opening my mouth.

I pry my jaws open with the letter you gave me at Christmastime

and find mold the color of a Galápagos tortoise’s shell encasing my teeth like caskets.

The only way I can get them clean again

is to rinse my mouth with your laughter

or pull your words through the phone.

I wrap “I love you” around my fingers

and floss with it to get rid of the last specks of mold wedged into my gums.

The Galápagos tortoise can live over 100 years.

One even lived to be 184,

but he belonged to a royal Polynesian family

who could probably give him all kinds of vitamins

to keep him staggering on long past his prime.

I think the reason the Galápagos tortoise can live so long

is because they live slow lives.

They barely ever travel faster than 1.6 miles per hour.

At the rate I’m chasing your sinewy shadow

I’ll probably die within the month

because doctors don’t make vitamins to prevent heartbreak yet.

You’ve been slowly chipping away at me

with a pickax the size of a clothespin

since the day I met you.

Maybe the reason the Galápagos tortoise can live so long is because

they spend more time searching for a pear cactus to munch on

than they do prying their jaws open with love letters

or chasing shadows they know they’ll never catch.

Lawrence Weller is a writer and avid hiker. If you stumble upon an anti-social bearded man in the woods, it may be him.