Lynne Ellis

To Walk on Earth

with two sentences from Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.

With nowhere to go I took off
my bra, put it back on again, ten
times a day. The weight of my body
compressed the underwires into my ribs.
I heard a lot of people felt this way.
International ambition to go to Mars
had to wait. In hundreds of isolated days
one cohort displayed hibernation behavior.
One cosmonaut grieved the loss of gravity.
Only in space do you understand
what incredible happiness it is just
to walk. He'd said. To walk on Earth.
I wanted a better piano because
you played Beethoven like you'd known him.
We sewed pillowcases over our mouths
& kissed. I felt you as light enough to lift;
your oxygen form wrapped around
my carbon one. Our chemistry a study
of heat: molecules in high energy states
could escape to space if not for gravity,
if not for a blue & fragile atmosphere.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Lynne Ellis (she/they) writes in pen. Her words appear in Poetry Northwest, Sugar House Review, The Shore, Barzakh, Stanchion, Full Mood and elsewhere. They were awarded the Missouri Review's 2021 Perkoff Prize and the 2018 Red Wheelbarrow poetry prize. Find their broadside collaboration with Felicia Rice, "A Virus Held Us," online at Moving Parts Press. She also self-publishes fridge poems on Instagram @stagehandpoet. Ellis is co-editor at Papeachu Press, supporting the voices of women and nonbinary creators.