NO ATMOSPHERE

First goes the air.
Then goes the sound.
Then every little thing
you thought would hold you down.

I learned that when you left me.

One cut tether,
one open door,
one second standing somewhere safe—
then nothing anymore.

Now I’m turning through the black,
watching Earth come in and out,
blue light flashing like a memory
I can’t live with, can’t live without.

Blue. Gone.
Blue. Gone.
Every time I see it
I hold on.

They say the blood begins to change,
the body swells against the skin,
your lungs keep begging for a breath
that isn’t coming back again.

That sounds about right.

I wake.
I work.
I talk.
I lie.

“I’m fine.”

Another little piece of me
goes drifting by.

My hands are numb.
My vision’s closing.
The stars are sharp and cold.

Funny how the universe gets bigger
while your whole world folds.

I thought losing you would break me
like a ship against a stone.

Instead it cut the cable
and left me out here all alone.

No explosion.
No grand goodbye.
No beautiful last scene.

Just distance growing second by second
between the man I was
and me.

Blue. Gone.
Blue. Gone.
Every time I lose it
it comes back on.

There is no sound in space.

So every thought comes through.

Every failure.
Every empty room.
Every version of me and you.

Every time I needed someone
just to prove that I was real.

Every wound I called a love affair
because I liked the way it felt.

And my heart—

Goddamn my heart—

keeps beating anyway.

Like it missed the evacuation.
Like nobody told it
there was nothing left to save.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

I’m freezing in the shadow.
I’m burning in the sun.

I don’t know which one hurts worse.

I don’t know what I’ve become.

But every time the Earth rolls past
I watch that little blue light burn,

because maybe hope is nothing more
than waiting for your world
to return.

Blue. Gone.
Blue. Gone.

Five more seconds.

Hold on.

Five more seconds.

Hold on.

I’m still spinning.
Still breaking.
Still farther than I’ve ever been.

But something underneath the wreckage
keeps pulling oxygen from nothing
and calling it a breath again.

Blue. Gone.
Blue. Gone.

I don’t know if I’m coming home.

But I’m still here
when the blue comes on.