i.

theres a sleepy world two hundred years from home where the fog winds itself around our ankles and paws with pressing tendrils at our feet the rain falls in misty puffs, settling its gentle touch upon our shoulders we cant see the sun but droplets on the trees glimmer with its captured rays a mosaic of fractured sunlight that leaves the night as bright as day we could stay awhile in this world of endless dawn but the steely sky hangs like a blanket overhead the birds bleat their wakefulness at every hour and we can feel in the muffled morning air that this place has never known the stars ii. the station where we met clung to a cliffside on a craggy moon, its rusty skeleton shuddering with the arrival of every shuttle. the dock, half-empty and dimly lit, echoed with every unexpected movement. in this haven for the dulled and blunted, your sharp edges caught my eye--so defiant and proud, a refusal to submit to your own insignificance out here on a speck in the great tapestry of things. dust from a dozen planets caked my clothes and hair, but the hull of my craft gleamed in the faint light from the moons motherworld and its shine, so bright in this faded place, drew you to me. our orbits spiraled closer with every passing until we collided--not with sparks or fire, but with the steady thump of a baseball in a mitt, a clap on the shoulder, a newly hung door swinging perfectly into place. iii. an ache for earth grows from my heart and over my ribs in vines that bloom with sharp, specific pain for certain wonders: I miss the springtime--not the flowers, for all planets are a canvas for natures dazzling displays, but the relief felt by every creature, every sprouting leaf that spreads its newborn crinkled wings, the yawning stretch of the world waking, twisting out of winters stiff embrace. I miss the bold heartbeat of a city, the hum of ten million rolling lives as they hurtle along, parallel, intertwined the heady feeling of taking a breath and knowing that the citys breathing too, in and out, until the sky fogs up with every sigh-among the stars and distant worlds, I havent found such a crowded place: space has too much breathing room. I miss earth (the history, its ancestry, the blood-soaked dust of hallowed ground, resounding with every human life to ever stumble through the worlds thorny thicket).

I miss what was--a memory preserved neatly in a snow globe, a pretty city scene with fat white flakes instead of dirt and smog. iv. you carry a scorched image of home: torn at the edges, filthy, faded, curling, sagging with the heavy weight of war, of flame, of the hollowed out skeleton of earth, with bones that scrape your skin where they rest, hung against your breastbone, beating a broken memory with each step, syncopated against the thrum of the survivor in your chest. you miss nothing. nothing but the way the leaves turned vibrant before they fell, shining and valiant on their deathbeds, burning the rusty earth like tiny setting suns as they died-we left a world whose limbs were crumbling like a thousand fallen leaves, but you insist a single leafs death is still the prettiest youve ever seen. v. I havent met a unicorn. but there are birds as large as elephants, who flapped their wings and knocked you backwards, laughing. there are snakes who hissed melodies in my ear as they coiled round my body, slowly squeezing, sensing my frailty. I held my breath and raptly listened to their song, a model member of their audience. as they finished, they unwound and dropped in puddles to the ground, bowing their flattened heads as I clapped politely, but asked for no encore. there are full-grown cats the size of field mice who scampered in droves over our legs, squeaking in a high-pitched drone. you picked one up and it bit you, sinking tiny teeth into your finger and leaving a crescent-shaped indentation that glimmered faintly. it took two weeks to fade, and you complained constantly of a displaced ache. there are animals for whom we had no name, thousands, with anomalous bodies out of storybooks--ten legs, one leg, four eyes, two mouths. they look like cats, or lizards, or frogs, or no known animal at all. there are horses who breathe fire, who glide through the air, who growl or chirp or hum, with coats of gold or purple or shimmering scales. but nowhere, in no planets woods or bays or deserts, have I found a horse with a horn. vi. another station, three landings after the first: orange sand crunches underfoot and sticks to our skin like perspiration the breeze lobs it in lazy billows, drops it like dusty rain in clouds

that puff sandy smoke rings, stinging I duck my head, squint my eyes -- and youre gone, off to admire the stations lolling ships, stained smooth by grainy winds I sigh, clenching my fists at my sides around the folding, fragile pact formed by your presence on my ship, every laugh Ive pulled from your chest, my yes to your request for a ride-I cradle the crumpled remains of these facts in clenched hands and the pulse in my palms presses against them, each beat asking when when when will you go, will you find another ship, another traveler, another lonely face in earths scattered ashes the wind kicks up a swirl of orange dust blooming thickly in the air, the buzzing red of eyelids pressed too hard, and just as blinding; the sand smears the station, the ships, your smile into bloody static a panicked call wrenches from my jaws-but the storm throws my voice back down my throat to my lungs, foul and gritty, unheard I reach for the earth--but the wind sucks the sand like a current and it slides smoothly from my grasp, leaving me to clutch at a shattering world and wait for this to pass. when the storm quiets and I am curled in childs pose, stuck through with sand and the shards of my fragile world, you find me, and ask if we can go. vii. my patchwork ship was supposed to sail only until I found a world to call home like earth had been home, like my childhood house had been home. I meant to reach a land with magic and morals and permanence, to come upon a princess and ask for her hand, to ease my tattered roots into fresher soil and stitch my wounds with certainty, in a world where storms bore symbols, not consequences, where shifting plates sunk no cities, and nothing burned unduly. viii. we tread lightly in a crisp night across a mosaic of shimmering glass spread to the horizon,

countless mirrors shining with reflected light the surface feels cool and dry, not quite like ice although fish fed on stars glitter as they flit beneath our feet the universe itself lives here: we clutch hands and slide on sheets of glass, like gliding through all of space while breathing, the air so pure each inhale feels like a revelation, and our breath rises in a spiral of shining mist to soar, weightless, to the heavens. ix. all is quiet but the purr of the ship as it drives on, reliable and safe, a humming lullaby you pluck from your perch in the pilots chair. my toes are tucked beneath me, my head dropped against the chilled viewing screen, as the engine rumbles something sweet against my temple. my trust in you brushes my neck in soothing, whispered strokes until my eyelids grow heavy with the warm weight of content, but I dont surrender. before us space stretches in a field of distant stars, a sight that thrums like a hymn in my chest even now, one hundred planets after the first. I long to see them all with you, the worlds and stations and storms, to know what happens when a star gets too close, to fly into its radiance and feel the raw power of its life on my face, to catch one and hold its warmth in my hand, against my chest; to find the impossible, the undoable, the unraveled rules of the universe--I want to seek not a home but continuation, with my life before me on a pinpricked map and a dose of certainty at my side.