Another poem

Someone mentioned in a comment that they'd like to see more poems, & I'm happy to oblige! This is a poem that a friend actually asked me to write. She was contemplating breaking up with someone, and wanted a poem called "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". How the space shuttle ended up in it, I dunno, but it seemed right. This is actually a revision of something I posted earlier. Not sure if I like the revision more than the original or not.




Breaking up is hard to do



You clamp down your helmet,

a fireball in the deep.

Your belt forms a cross across

your chest. If you have been falling

for weeks, you couldn't know it:

Your circle carves a pivot



anchored in void.



There is no safety net,

the weight of your bones

tipped into cloud.

This was the time to end it,

time to come home.

You couldn't have known



This poem ends like a snowflake.



It is easy to ignore the way your wings

yawn back, the pinch of fire

under your chest. Soon you

forget it all; the scent

of melting wax, the alarms,

the quaking sky. The nagging



deceleration.



The wind opens you up.

You explode somewhere over Texas, your bones

snapped on the knee of the sky.

Your helmet is found melted into the grass

of the only abandoned Seven Eleven

in Sandy Creek, Texas.



Two children stand hand in hand in a wood,

their tongues outstretched.



You are coming home.