"spaceperson(s)", Benedicta J. Foo
my mother dug me from seashells:
two specks of sand from saltwater left to rest
on the vanity in a resort room. she says:
that’s why your veins run more blue,
your skin translucent and pooling
where your feet are, like stained glass.
see? like coloured water moving with gravity
at the tenth of the time. eight faces a month,
four tides a day.
but you don’t exist where i do. you exist instead
in a body made from soil: the balls of your feet
from potatoes, your fingers from celery stalks,
eyes from apples that thrive buried in loam.
your being is entirely separate from the lunar sea
that governs mine – too much water and you’ll
drown. too much earth and i’ll turn brittle.
so we try to exist elsewhere, right
under the gods, in a starship the colour
of butter. stencil in the numbers 1-7-0-1 for the
17th and final attempt at making a home. hang
our clothes in separate quarters that still go
the same way. build a nursery for your toes, glass
between our rooms. they say the universe is under
no obligation to make sense – especially not to
terrans of a different cosmos. but we pray:
for a quieter moon, and for an explanation
anyway.