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remember when you fixed

upon the rust world of Mars

through your boyhood window,

 

did you ever visualize 

your fatherhood frame

 

would stand over

those north pole water molecules

 

that sit restrained 

beneath the bewitching surface?

 

You must know: water

thirty-five million miles away

cannot hold the same heft of home

 

as when you drink a tall glass

at the kitchen table

across from your son’s preschool smile.

 

Open the front door. Mars 

beams red in a blacktop darkness.

 

Once that rocket slices through the sky,

your son will learn 

to say your name as a curse

 

while your ex sleeps

in the black hole of her mattress.

 

Three light-minutes away,

your Kansas lung sacs 

will sweep in buttressed oxygen

 

over oxidized soil. Soil

a twin shade

 

of your father’s rust-worn truck

engineless in your garage

a decade after his death.

 

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