life on mars, or a backup escape plan

the ghost is grinning above me again, under the impression
that we finally made it out. the sunlight is leaking gold
through my blinds but i do not trust the warmth it extends yet.
the news says there was a collision on a highway southbound;
i don't read any further than that. death is impatient
for everyone but gives me the grace to pack my bags first.

call me when the roadblock gets cleared.
i'll be here, waiting for them to invent a way
to bury something so that it never comes back.

i dig crescent moons into my palms from clenched fists;
everything is changing again and i am a phase behind.

it would be fine, if there were something else for me to hold
that didn't mark me with regret as i fall from the stars.
i wanted my name up there and all i have managed to do
is make it a metonymy for critical failure: i'd give up all my fire
in exchange for seeing my crash through someone else's eyes.
maybe there's something in it to remember fondly. maybe
if i could describe the international orange of the blaze
to my younger self, she'd close the window on her sky.

my mother's voice is in my ears again, hazy as static
as she asks when i land, if i've managed to silence
all the sirens yet. i breathe in aftertastes of smoke
and wonder if a burning house can still be a home
if you lie to yourself about who dropped the match.
it could, if i learn to live with ash scars for walls.

the night is tame here, retracting its fangs again
to reconcile with the satellites scattering like birds.
the only place left for me to go as the light dims
is back to the ocean that might've missed me after all.

the skies will be clear this summer, i swear it.

the waves were sorry that they'd mourned me too early,
soft in their catch like i was once and could still try to be.
in another life, i never left at all, and i stand at the shore
ready to cause new ripples with the careless toss of a stone,
unaware of how they shake me now in saltwater shivers.

in that life, i am nothing more than where i came from
and it is mostly fine. the gulls still scream at me to leave
but i pretend not to know what they mean. the paint cracks
will find me there, creeping up the walls of my childhood room
like the morning glory i tore out; i will see them once a month
and wonder how it got so bad, but make no move to conceal
the symptoms of a homeland growing weary of me.

i float on my back, write love letters to the fog
out of the seafoam at my fingertips. if you were here,
you'd add a footnote that said someday soon i will feel
that pull at my bones telling me to run again, but for now
i will allow the storm to find me. tomorrow, wildfire season
will pass us by. tomorrow, no rocket engines will breathe.

when you track me down, join me in memorizing
the gray above and below this pale blue dot:
i blink away the black of interstellar realms
and wait for our own sun to receive me again.

Man, I just read this whole thread and all of these are so fantastic! I'm a sucker for science poetry and these were just so painfully relatable. I especially liked "v. an incomplete list of places to go before i die." I wish I had it in me to write a longer comment, but I just wanted to say these are awesome.