We stayed all night to finish a puzzle
of the universe and still I feel no closer to
the center of it all, this box of disparate edges,
only microscopic in your worldview as our static
fades. Our feet were pressed together as we placed
the final voids in their lust on the 4 A.M. floor, long
after the wild dogs left us for the February arctic.

I wanted there to be black vastness when we were done–
a suffocation of no oxygen so necessary to pull our
gravities close to stay warm and survive as humans
must. But such is the fantasy of space– we’ll never die
astronauts on the floor in M’s apartment, growing
more distant each moment we don’t leave the surface.

(originally published in Home Planet News Online, Fall 2020)