The Age of Space Travel

Photo By Jonatan Pie on Unsplash

You can make any constellation you want
when you stare into the Milky Way,
it’s the Etch A Sketch of stars. There’s one I call
“My cat eating the stomach of a bird”
and over there’s “My friend shooting up
on London Bridge.” He has a kid now,
lives in Bristol, sells paint. His daughter
wants to be an astronaut and take a kangaroo
to the moon. Her name is Ruth. She was born
with a twisted leg. Kids call her Clomper.
She sends me links to clips of people
floating in space. I send her pictures of birds
riding horses. She doesn’t know her pop’s history
with smack. Will she ever, I wonder, or have her own?
That roo would hop and never come down.
It was my mission in life to go to space
until I added up how much I’d have to spend
on ladders to get there.
My funniest autobiographical constellation
is “Man trying to look on the bright side”:
her father didn’t jump that time
and was rescued when he did; the bird was dead
before my cat got its stomach;
kangaroos can live without food or oxygen
or zoos; I didn’t cry yesterday
and will lie and say I didn’t
if I cry today. I can’t get close
to most people. Their mouths
and heads prevent it, physics does, decorum,
me. If he hadn’t been a junkie,
if she didn’t limp, they’d seem normal,
which is a different species from me
and I’d stay away. When she’s older,
space travel will be commercially available.
If I’m rich, I’ll send her to heaven
long enough to whisper more clearly
to her mother, who was a far better junkie
than her pops. Got high once and never came down.
Imagine the first time you try something
it kills you. Something other than being alive.