Trial Period: Earth

I tried on your tender life
under the light blue sky.

I tried on your body, bipedal
atop its delicate spindles. At first all eyes were upon it
like a burning building. People shouted at it from across
the street, from upstairs windows and passing vehicles.
But these days, all those eyes now look right through it,
even if it is blocking the way.

I tried on your marriage,
which unfolded in sheetrocked rooms
painted beige then gray then iceberg blue.
Often the spouse and I went to get-togethers
where couples held slippery bottles and joked
about married life. The men laughed, striking
the tabletop, and the women laughed to cover
the sound that surged from their diaphragms,
a drone that roiled in a register so deep
it vibrated my tympanic pits.

I tried on parenthood, depositing
the child at the school entrance in the thin morning air
after having packed his dog-face rucksack
with a lunch of soft bread laden with fruit jelly,
a smock to collect paint stains, and a bulletproof insert.

I do not wish to continue this trial.
I wish to rocket home to where the gaseous envelope
is toxic-bright and bathes our lovers' mouthparts
in an orange cast and the surface gravity forces
all four pads to the frying-hot rock. I wish to be held close.
I wish to enter slumber listening to the sizzle of iron debris hitting
our heavy atmosphere which tucks us in like the lid of a tomb.