Friday Poem

You take the lamp with your last battery
and meet me at the radios, where it’s quiet,
and we can be alone. I like how the light dims
and flickers, the way it plays across the steel.
I like how we can’t see the sand in the air.
You hold my gloved hand in your gloved hand
and we walk the hydroponic halls. I love you
because your eyes are green, because we eat
protein cans and you tell me about birds,
how your dad still has grass in his vault.
And we’re dressed to the nines, in our cleanest
boots, the dust scrubbed from our tanks
until they gleam. Our utility suits are beeping
beneath our helmet read-outs, but no longer
are we clumsy, like those men who fled to Mars.
And we go not to the movies but to the oxygen
chambers, where we crouch low, lean close
to a vent. You shed your gear first, lips dry
and desert-cracked, and we share that same
recycled air, press our mouths against the wall,
breathe so deeply we see stars.

by Kristen Mears
from Palette Poetry