a quarto for L.B.
all alone in the dark you travel this year
a blobfish floats across a vast ocean of
quiet no one to observe space and time you watch
it pass the days moving like planets
which move so slowly circling a distant star
but this is home sweet bitter and bright this
home and oh what means you are alone what
would it mean to ascend? would it mean to orbit?
being brought from one place wholly new
one environment into the next a place familiar
another will change everything and you can’t wait to go
expand (r)evolve warp speed ahead so fast
into a new state of being starships can only dream
sadder and wiser for it of this light this (e)motion
even so this being can and will move through the dark spaces
survive anything even this emerge on your own terms
Gretchen Rockwell is a queer poet who can frequently be found writing about gender, science, space, and unusual connections. Xe is the author of the chapbooks “body in motion” (perhappened press) and “Lexicon of Future Selves” (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press) and two microchapbooks; xer work has appeared in AGNI, Cotton Xenomorph, Whale Road Review, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. Find xer at www.gretchenrockwell.com or on Instagram at @daft_rockwell.