Space Struck

by Paige Lewis

and though he did not wisp his tongue at me, though he made no rude remarks about my bony feet or the house I was raised in, I wanted to harm him. I was frightened— I thought I knew where everything belonged.

I feel as if I’m on the moon listening to the air hiss out of my spacesuit, and I can’t find the hole. I’m the vice president of panic, and the president is missing.

Every experience seems both urgent and unnatural—like right now, this train is approaching the station where my beloved is waiting to take me to the orchard, so we can pay for the memory of having once, at dusk, plucked real apples from real trees.

Tell me, how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion?

a miracle is anything that God forgot to forbid.

Still, I try to hold on to nothing for fear of being crushed by what can be taken because sometimes not even our mouths belong to us.

Listen, in the early 1920s, women were paid to paint radium onto watch dials so that men wouldn’t have to ask the time in dark alleys. They were told it was safe, told to lick their brushes into sharp points. These women painted their nails, their faces, and judged whose skin shone brightest. They coated their teeth so their boyfriends could see their bites with the lights turned down. The miracle here is not that these women swallowed light. It’s that, when their skin dissolved and their jaws fell off, the Radium Corporation claimed they all died from syphilis. It’s that you’re telling me about the dull slivers of dead saints, while these women are glowing beneath our feet.

if you consider the fact that I’m a miserable excuse for a planet.

I move through life like I’m trying to avoid a stranger’s vacation photo.

Lately, I’ve been feeling betrayed by names: the king cobra isn’t a cobra, the electric eel isn’t an eel, and it turns out my anger was fear all along.

who feared his words becoming more dangerous than his hands.

I’m a miserable excuse for a weapon. All stopped up with dread, useless.

What I mean is, this one light can reach as many people as the sun, and you only have to reach me.

We believe tides are caused by millions of oysters gasping in unison.

Yes, we fall in love, but our love isn’t golden so much as it is Midas lite—hard and cheap—everything it touches turns green.

Where I’m from, we are practical and ready to grow our mistakes.

It’s selfish to want to witness awe— to stand in a museum and shift your gaze between the painting and your reflection in its frame.

I wonder if we name storms because naming is the only power we’re left with.

If this world is a plucked violin string, am I part of its sound or its stillness?

the mention of silence I don’t understand. worse than the silence itself

Do they still count if I’m saving all of my shiniest thoughts for you?

Listen, I’ve got children in car wrecks and old folks in hospice to call on, but take my advice and stop asking for men’s forgiveness. It’s a dangerous demonstration. If you offer a sorry mouth, they’ll break it.

And besides, he’s teaching me confinement. How to feel the fences.