Space Shuttle Challenger

 

"You always have to be different." --my mother's bitter complaint.

My tricycle mind,

up to its seat springs in rocket fuel. 

That will make you different

and confused

and terrified. 

'What do you see at night when you close your eyes?" I asked my older brother. 

"Nothing. What do you see?"

Oh, colors, crazy colors, a shifting kaleidoscope

and sometimes 

scary things.

I can't make them stop

and I lay awake to escape the turning, appearing, revolving, staring.

Later, older, I tried dragging and drugging

my heels, alcohol,

but Challenger blew up and sprayed across the sky.

I watched on tv and saw my inside outside.

I was a baby writer

and once upon a pair of wheels

I wrote crazy stories for friends who asked if I wrote them high.

I wrote them sober,

then got high to stop.

Later still, I set down the drink and slept with the light on for years,

prone to night terrors and ptsd.

I embraced the Church of Regular Meals,

subscribed to the doctrine of Keep Coming Back.

Slowly, my world came into phase

with a job

a spouse

a child

but, tame as a housecat, no more bright crashes to watch at night.

Even later, single again, child grown, lost in my own skin,

I set out to find out if it's really like riding a bike.

"Give me all of your dreams, you dreamer," said Langston Hughes

and I met myself 

in the interstices

between this world and some other.

Totally amazing mind

as my Cranberries fan friend said of me

and helped me learn to ride the rocket

to these lines

and this life

where I dive into the deep end

fearless

A

F.

_____

I'm floating in a most peculiar way/

and the stars look very different today 

for Dverse Poetics: Visionary Poetry, hosted by Ingrid. 

find The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes HERE. 

Music: the Cranberries "Dreams"