In orbit, my child,
your hair, loose and free
from gravity, radiates like a halo.
You say the window
always facing Earth
is where everyone wants to be,
gazing at oceans, learning
to recognize the features
of the continents’ estranged faces.
At night—what is night to you?—
you tuck inside your hibernaculum,
into your sleeping bag
tethered to the inner wall
of the space station.
I feel it in my body,
my heavy body on Earth, the fear
when I think how thin the skin
between you and the cold
airless nothing, the fatal
cosmic rays. On camera, your lightness
dizzies my perception,
conducts your weightless joy.
As if you didn’t know
about the annihilating void!
Oh but you know, you do know—
I’m the one who forgets, every time,
as my head sinks into my pillow
and the ordinary air
moving in and out of my lungs
binds me to this life.
