Voyage to the Exoplanet

If I could write your story, then you’d leave me for a whale’s tail,
your smile emerging from their splashes. A bicycle ride away,

your home beside the sand paths. In Nebraska, we lived a quiet
life: spring mornings by the farmer’s market, homemade vases

honeyed by buttercups, the same faces fluttering by our walks.
At first, I thought you cherished our small town. No scuba diving

adventures. No whirlpool danger signs—just fixing the birdhouse
on Monday and shopping for windchimes. When we received mail

stamped with a turtle shell, your eyes fluttered like falling stars
while reading each letter. That night, I watched dusk roll across

the grass field outback. You were born from this land of drought,
restless for the ocean. You wanted to rescue sea stories on their last

heartbeat, even at the risk of drowning. I know I said I’m afraid
of shark jaws or lanternfish myths, but when I’m old enough,

I’ll buy you a plane ticket to the Pacific. You’re a marine biologist,
I’ll hear you laugh out seafoam in our calls. How light scatters

out of ghost shrimp, visible green bodies. So let us separate. Grieve
for once. Forget these weekends of stargazing, believing we are telescopes

rather than astronauts. When you swim by heatwaves, coral bleaching,
fish skeletons, I promise you’ll dig out oyster pearls, deep sea mysteries—

discover truth lost to shipwrecks. In the future, I hope you can fly
to the exoplanet, still orbiting, still remembering life strung between

the Milky Way and Midwestern sun.