Three blue numerals illumine the room.
You shiver, chilled from the fallow corn field.
We slip through the gloom, this electronic
twilight torn from NASA’s scrapbook of Neptune,
or the light from one of its cold moons
exposing towel craters and sheet plains.
Who knew matter would look like this, would take
on light, a sudden streak, would feel like this,
reveal a body nine planets away,
when all the light we thought that mattered was
three planets aligned. What does the question
of life matter so far from the sun? Why
not continue to Alpha Centauri
or another close star, find a planet
to settle, start our lives over, forget
the dark past, the path it took to get here,
light years away. All we would have is this
room’s pale light as guide, its stained navy sheets,
squeaky bed, boxer briefs, jeans, the turquoise
towel on the floor, two brown locked on two
blue as they orbit not each other but
morning’s ciphered blur.