I cupped Kansas soil
in my harvest hands.
Now on Martian land,
skin-to-soil contact
is never authorized
as hominid microbes
would tarnish this crimson signature.
I am an alien five radio wave
minutes away
from your milk flow
where our son latches onto the globe
of your atmospheric breast
exposed in an autumn dawn.
Will we ever trade breaths again
like the month before I left for Mars,
we sat on the porch, fireflies’
supernovae popping alive
beneath the shield
of Earth’s magnetic fist.
Within my white sheath spacesuit
in the openness of Arabia Terra,
solar radiation’s sword
slices open my brain,
collapses the memory
of the cornhusk heartbeats
I left behind.
I must remember the lavender
petals strewn down our wedding aisle
back in my lava tube’s shelter.
The day before I left for Mars,
I held our newborn
like a cup of water.
Fifty moons on,
his bones stretch
since I snapped his delivery
room photograph, cries
suspended
before my Kansas sight.