Heliocentric

If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still. — Homer I’m striving to be a better astronaut, but consider where I’m coming from, the exosphere, a desk where the bluest air thins to a lip. Impossible to know the difference from where I sit and space. I promise I still dream of coming back to you, settling on your yellow for the kitchen. We won’t fight. Let it not manifest. Not over the crumpled bodies of laundry. Let us not row over the nail polish, its color, the spilled sun. Inspiration is the deadliest radiation. It never completely leaves the bones. You know. From here, there are no obstructions but the radiant nothingness. An aurora borealis opens like a fish. This. To the pyramids, yes, to a great wall. And there you are, moving from curtain to curtain. O, to fantasize of having chosen some design with you. But the moons over Jupiter. But asteroids like gods deadened by the weight of waiting. I remember you said pastel for the cabinet where the spice rack lives. That I ought’ve picked you up flowers when I had a chance. Daisy, iris, sun. Red roses. Ultraviolet, the color of love (what else but this startles the air open like an egg?). I’m really trying to be better, to commit to memory the old songs about the ground, to better sense your latitudes, see the corona of your face. Take your light as it arrives. Earth is heavenly too. But know that time is precious here. How wine waits years and years to peak. What is there to do: I’ve made love to satellites in your name. I’m saying I can’t say when I’ll return. Remember me, for here are dragons and the noble songs of sirens. Stars that sway elysian. Ships that will not moor, lovers who are filled with blood and nothing more. Who could love you like this? Who else will sew you in the stars? Who better knows your gravity and goes otherwise, to catastrophe? I’ve schemed and promised to bring you back a ring from Saturn. But a week passes, or doesn’t manage. Everything steers impossible against the boundless curb of light. Believe I tried for you. Against space. Time takes almost everything away. To you. For you. A toast to the incredible. I almost wish I’d never seen the sky when always there was you. Sincerely,