by Lisa Morin Carcia

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. 

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Lisa Morin Carcia writes software specs for money and poetry for love. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig online, Eunoia Review, Talking River Review, North American Review, Connecticut Review, Floating Bridge Review, Alimentum, and elsewhere. Born and raised in San Diego, she now lives near Seattle.