Splashdown

After the parade,

The astronaut let her hair grow long

And sometimes wore sunglasses

While picking up rotisserie chicken for dinner.

She answered the phone less and less

But watched the waves lap

At all hours.

A black cormorant’s perigee

And plunge. A puffer fish

Surfacing under stars.

Dolphins

Like kindergartners

In a game of shadow tag.

A neighbor said that her eyes

Had become telescopes,

Bending an ancient, violet light.

One lover, leaving, said her lips

Tasted of paradox.

The astronaut knew

Her place in the world

No longer was.

She’d glimpsed herself

Transfigured in a parhelion,

Her body impossible

As a Klein bottle,

Both containing herself

And everything that she wasn’t.

She saw that dawn

Is both an entry and

An exodus.

But even then,

It came to her:

The realization that

Long after her rapture,

She’d still have to shop at Target.