The Astronaut

The Astronaut

Part I: Resistance

When you left me the first time, the sky

started to drip out of the atmosphere.

The stars were pelting me like hail.

I tried to sleep it off, but nighttime wrapped

his fists around my neck and suffocated me.

We were under a supermoon,

and I had never felt farther away from everything

I convinced myself I was.

When you came back to me, lips first, the sky

was still melting. What is the word

for when the medication doesn’t heal the wound?

The word for when the meteors are still

hurdling towards us even though the earth spun us away from them?

Part II: Persistence

You will never know how badly I wanted you

to be the one I made stir fry with at 3 in the morning.

You will never know how much it cuts me to know I am still searching.

Do not take it personal. After all, you will never know anyways.

When you fall in love with a girl like me, you can expect the sun

to have a lazy schedule, for there to be more rain than November is used to.

Which is to say your consistency terrifies me.

The way you mathematically thought you could fix

me. Like you were a shot of serotonin or an injection

of moondust that could saturate the drought inside my chest.

You were a meteorologist that grew tired

of the fluxing weather. You blamed climate change. You blamed

the rising sea levels. You blamed the alteration of the rain patterns. You probably would have blamed the gods had you believed in any of them.

Part III: Forgiveness

What is the word for leaving

the planet you made yourself a home in?

The winters on Mars are much milder than the ones I grew up enduring.

I am roadtripping across the galaxy in my rocketship, and

I have never loved you less than I do right now.

Even before I knew you existed, I pined for you like the Christmas present

I had been begging for. Even then I loved you

more than I ever could now.