Year 1:
Hello? Hello from far away!
Are you getting this transmission?
I hope this message makes its way
to the girl who worked ignition
on take off day, who fixed my math,
who said, “Send my love to Neptune,”
then asked me with a charming laugh
to conquer her a little moon.
Here’s a picture. Will it do?
Hello, spaceman. I remember.
Your picture is off center.
My telescope takes better shots thousands of miles gone.
You don’t know me, but I’ve seen you
running all around the launch crew.
You accelerated faster than a hadron-charged proton.
First in line, you volunteered
to explore space for five whole years.
Why, you nearly left the planet without your flight vest on!
Is the speed of light not fast enough for you?
Year 2:
Earthgirl, you would not believe the space!
Space, space, everywhere, slows my thought,
sharpens my mind, shows me my place:
a vagabond, a microdot.
You wrote last week—or yesterday—
of sunrise, how you would miss it
if you were me, but, in a way,
I have a million dawns to visit.
Take my latest catch: Europa.
Skin like marble, hard in the night,
but melts eagerly in hope of
Jupiter’s touch on morning light.
(I look forward to your letters,
I hope you know.)
Know? I know too many things!
I am chasing two degrees.
My time shrinks to a pinprick on a proton on a star.
Coffee-fueled and overflowing,
Rent is high, my stress is showing,
Plus the crew in the command room think I’m totally bizarre!
(Wish I could join you
in Europa’s glow.)
Year 3:
There was no beauty like the stars.
No brighter jewel. No higher dream.
My gaze was fixed on planets far,
running toward a single theme
of galaxies and things that are
wove deep between the cosmic seams.
Now plunged in Neptune’s dim-dark waves,
washed in this remote pearl of night,
I’m shocked to find how my soul craves
a certain laugh more than the light,
a laugh that once you freely gave
unknowing how its music might
accompany me to the void,
firm my resolve, and pierce me through,
striking like a meteoroid,
igniting every thought of you.
You are my lighthouse, beaming joy.
You must know how I feel—
I do.
Year 4:
I wish that I could say I’ve
been patient like a sea wife,
abandoned by the bluffs to bide by bitter breaking seas.
But I have real life to attend.
Family, colleagues, pets, and friends.
My pilot’s license pends on a preemptive probe of—
Please.
Take a breath and be with me.
See the arc of Saturn’s rings—
I wish I may, I wish I might.
Yes, I have that in my sight.
Those little stars don’t twinkle when the scope is on the fritz.
You know, not everyone down here can
see I’m in love with a spaceman.
They’re pushing me toward other goals, toward other labs, toward other—
It’s quiet out here in the dark.
I need your voice. I need your heart—
But my boyfriend’s on a rocket and—
Stop.
My boyfriend’s on a rocket and—
Slow down.
My boyfriend’s on a rocket and my head is in the—
Two.
Two?
Two more years, my love.
Not even a blink to a quasar.
Less than a flight round the sun.
Year 5:
I saw a boy and thought of you,
eyes alive and dark and new,
they sparkled as yours did
the only time I saw your face.
How I envied your delight
at the wonders of the night.
I wished I could be in your mind
when you looked up at space.
....Set me a place.
I saw the sky and thought of you,
pink stretched across the the blue,
a nebula to greet me on this day—
....I’m on my way.
There are things you have to know.
There are places I must go.
....I’m nearly there and I would tear the sky apart to see your face.
They have built another ship.
There will be another trip.
....No time to talk. The engine’s hot. I’m coming soon!
Don’t hit the moon.
Year 1:
There is no beauty like the Earth.
So you were right about the stars.
The dirt, the air, the life, the trees!
In space they shine more brilliantly.
Five years, you’re gone. But you are worth
I’m sorry I must travel far.
the wait for all eternity.
There’s just so much, so much to see!
Say hello to Neptune for me.
Written in September 2022, as part of the NYCMidnight Rhyming Story Competition. Had 8 days to write a 600 word rhyming story with the prompts: Romance / Round-Trip / Rushed. (Have added words since then. 😉)
On paper, the formatting and spacing is different, but I adapted it to blog form.
romance, sci fi, writing prompt, long, rhyming, short story
Dinosaur Fondue Poetry 