Self-Portrait as the astral emergency you’re fielding on facetime

Sam Herschel Wein

for Chen

my moonbotmoonship swivels between shards cascading
from a nearby asteroid, fizzled from friskingly
nearby mooncampers, too hot too heavy to notice
they’ve bumped some stuff, literally, metaphysically,
gastrointestinally and otherwise, I’m outmaneuvering
their numerously caused death rocks shooting over moonpuffs
clustered on mooncraters in my fullymesh floralprint
moonspacemoonsuitcostumemoonmoon I’m on the moon
your favorite place, how encouraged you were I left
my safety stars, my overly known orbit, my sufficiently
swam earth waters, but you sang, the moon, but you
cheesed the crusty tales and I wanted to be an aerodynamic
astronautical actress I wanted ascension to bounce
off bouldered planets new visions of sky I
had want, a penchant for dreaming, the great
out there of what my work is capable of I’m capital
E not Empty yet, of gas, dodging wisped rocks
while I’m pulling up communications, lowering
my shields, boosting connection towers I
facetime you, 11PM, the two of us not anywhere close
to sleeping, though we have whirlwinds of work
the next day you say I’m the best pilot navigator
in the entire pearly cloudcover you’re a wrecking
ruckus-ball of blasting we are heartpath forward
you remind me, I will flourish in space, in moonpants,
on moonland, even with its limited air, even with
meteors swinging so fast it feels like I could
combust just the open sun of your voice
just the remembered horizons of your smile
always the ways electricity closes in lines
that feels like an escape pod lands in my living room
where I can float, just minutes longer, like
we’re together, like we are slamming
boots on new unidentified moons
not these planets, just look a little further, just look
at our ladders, our space stations, the
spacedust we’ll carry in small Ziploc bags