Interstellar space sounds like my finger on a wine glass—
whining, high and sharp, a choir we cannot identify.
I’ve listened to the recordings.
The plasma oscillates around our intrusive satellite
and sings a peculiar song.
If I ever made it to that frontier
would that sound cut into my pink brain like a knife?
Would it open my skull like a wet rose?
Unlikely, my love. I bet I would be sick of it
pretty quickly.
Let us be bored of space, you and I.
Let us look out the window of our apartment
at the leaves we cannot count,
the stones the dinosaurs crushed to sand—
at the cosmic breath, posing as the gray mist of Tuesday morning—
and think, there must be more than this.
Make no mistake,
boredom is what drives our species
from one triumph to the next.
Our minds hold awe like a wasp in a butterfly net.
No one knows how the thing
we want flutters, what petals it alights upon,
what it sees.
We must keep searching.
It’s a dangerous thought for a Tuesday.
Will I tire of you, for instance?
Will there be a day when your hand on my back
doesn’t spin my heart like red wine in a crystal glass?
Maybe. But then I’ll find a new way
for you to touch me.
If I have a prayer,
it is that someday
something with blood like mine
hears that eerie melody in real time, sees the burning fires of stars
and is unimpressed before magnificent infinities—
moves on.
© 2016 by Leslie J. Anderson
