In Space, I Learn How to Fly

My psychiatrist “cured” me of my claustrophobia

by having me spend the night in an elevator

stuck between floors so I’d resist the temptation

to pry open the doors with my balloon-animal wrists

deflating under stress unable to hoist my dry heaving,

trembling body up to safety.

The green light to take flight into the unknown

is knowing that there’ll be no firefighters to rescue me

if there’s a malfunction with the control panel,

with the doors, or with the voice in my mind that tells me

nothing is going to be alright.

Lifelines are limited in Space

and in all spaces that concern my body.

Maybe I wasn’t born to wake up with a

smile plastered on my face like the people

in a Lunesta commercial.

Maybe on Earth I wasn’t meant to have green fairy wings

because fairy wings are meant for fairy tales,

and I am not a work of fiction.

When the spaceship starts to feel like an elevator

that I can’t escape,

I count backwards from 10.

Count backwards from 10

1300 times before the firefighter arrives.

Count backwards for takeoff.

Count backwards from 10

as the pilot places me

under emergency sedation.

Count forward from zero –

these blueprint lips reciting

my blueprint body into a fully realized dream.

Count forward from one as my soul eclipses my body,

and Earth watches from a rooftop bar.