ode to an astronaut

timeless.

It’s day seven since Fonz got his stem cells returned to him and about one day since he’s all but left his body to face the darkest part of the cave of his own healing. The irony that this and so much more is taking place in the center of Cancer season and on a new moon in Cancer is not lost on me. But it’s still much more significant than anything I know what to do with today. I’m unslept and practically frozen in my own body. I’ve been rewatching TV series for the last year. They say during traumatic times that this is common. Last night, I watched people watching a moon landing fifty-five years ago to the month. That part is true. For a moment, the world watched something happen simultaneously and felt the thread weaving us all together here on earth. Also true, yet harder to prove. Today doesn’t feel anything like that, although I want it to. I want to feel connected to the center of this, to feel grounded, or to touch the cosmos, but instead what I feel is unbalanced on a tightrope between worlds. Not like a sage or someone who knows anything more than what is before me, I’m more of a mirror in a fun house. Depending on where you’re standing, there is some other side to this reflecting back. Because the song is turning around and around in my head, I play it while we drive to his daily appointment at the infusion clinic. It’s ninety-three degrees out, so the air conditioning is cranked all the way up, so for us to hear the song, I need to blast it. And I think it's gonna be a long, long time. ‘Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home, Oh, no, no, no, I'm a rocket man. Rocket man. Burning out his fuse up here alone. Of course, I can’t be sure, but I imagine Fonz, practically extra-terrestrial, needing to leave this planet—his whole life—behind to destroy this disease that took him from the life he imagined he was living in the first place. As close as I can be to this, it is still not happening to me in the way it is to him. I hover above it all with no gravity. All gravity. I touchdown only to find my humanness despite desperately trying to conjure the divine. I’m sure it’s here somewhere. But for now, find me palms up, beside and inside it all, hoping for a smooth landing.