Matt Witt, Horsetail at Dawn, 2015 (Artist Website)
Photograph
The first rule is: Don’t answer the phone.
The people of Earth may try to call.
We smoke the alien taste, then float
down the airlock of the stairway and stop
before we reach the neighbors’ window where
their father lies all day in his hospital bed
so he can see the birds.
We turn and climb the lunar hill
back up to the ship. Even then, gravity’s
broken—a joke with our heads and feet
floating on thin tethers. I wear my moon boots,
hand-stitched from ripstop and down, a kit
I got in the mail, which always
make us laugh—outlandishly large,
their canvas soles swishing on the carpet.
We walk a minimal-G ballet, slo-mo arms,
no music; that would only confuse
our synapses already snapping and swelling.
We’ll have a half-hour if the PCP dose
was right. If too much, we’ll die over and over,
trapped in our suits. I remember stories
of guys jumping from rooftops, of the hearts
of fifteen-year-old girls stilled to motionless
fists. My own heart hammers on its pipe
in the empty black. We’ll have
about a year of spacewalks before
the oxygen effervesces its bright little blades
and carves the wrong initials in my brain.
We’ll never speak of this.
We can’t love our alien selves forever.
The file is sealed, even to us.