“Trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful. And from up here you also look like one thing, you know Homo sapiens is all of us no matter where you’re from or what you look like we’re all one people.”

Victor J. Glover 

A solar eclipse on the far side of the moon

War being waged by a menacing buffoon

Toddlers eagerly watching in pink space suits

Mothers crying out beneath stormtrooper boots

Around the moon and back to Earth

A miraculous perspective with unmeasurable worth 

Ten days in the heavens reframing decades of Hell

A mindset to be shared, one meant to compel

The aether, a miracle like humanity itself 

Somewhere in the bedlam we lost sight of this wealth 

Praying this mission makes even the hardened movable

We are all one people, and we all look beautiful 

I won a poetry award in the sixth grade. This gave me hope that I could one day be an accomplished and renowned poet. Fast forward a couple of decades, and here I am, sitting with the reality that poetry is difficult for me. It does not come easily or present elegantly. I practice whenever I see an interesting opportunity to do so.

One day I might stop trying to give myself boundaries around my poems. Stop defaulting to the structures that feel safe and branch out of form, dimension, or content matter. Perhaps my poetry will mature when I stop reading Dr. Seuss books to a toddler on a daily basis. For now I am here with the cringe, letting it teach me and putting it out there.

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