i am an astronaut
i read this post before sleeping. i fell asleep thinking of hedonism and not hedonism, but i wake up in the barrel of a space shuttle. the walls are windowless, paper-thin sheets of metal. i know without looking the planet outside is white rock. i am an astronaut. i am an astronaut plummeting to earth in a mint green bridesmaid dress. i am an astronaut thrown back to earth with no umbrella, no blood, no bleach, no sutures, no orchids, only my pale green strapless dress. we have left behind two others on the white rock planet, in the blazing sun, in the the bleached light. the craft is an asterisk in the sky.
we land on a highway with the force of a locomotive. i walk away from the crumpled rubble carrying a bright yellow cloth wardrobe, inset with clear plastic windows. i don’t bloody my teeth or tear my knuckles. i think of the bleached planet. i shouldn’t have walked away. the pilot is crumpled. i walk away from him, too. i walk along the broken highway until i arrive home. no one is expecting me. i wasn’t expecting to plummet to earth in a thin metal craft. the bathroom tile is clean. the carpets are white and have been vacuumed. i sit on the bed, with my pale billowing skirt and perfect hair and waxy skin, under my knowledge of the bleached planet. the daylight filters in as if nothing happened. i sit there until i hear a knock on the door. i wake up to a window full of snow, and think: is that what space exploration is supposed to be like?
thank you for the barrage of words, for inventing and arranging them, for sending out locomotives full of them. thank you for sending them out with the umbrellas and shovels i need to sort them. i an not a poet, but i need to be pummeled by fistfuls of images and fueled by words, to find definition with which i may navigate. thank you for the sort of provocation that leads to dreaming of space travel and thin metal and mint green dresses and waking up to snow. now that i am awake, i will always know that i returned from outer space untarnished and fearless.
