my battery is getting low and it is getting dark...

ONE MAN MISSION TO MARS: DESTINED TO FAIL.

it's blazoned in every headline,

broadcasted across every airwave in the milky way,

branded into the soft skin behind your eyelids.

you can't fight destiny, 

no matter how man made,

but what else is there to do

when the body and the planet they stuck you on are too small?

being weightless isn't so bad.

maybe this is what angels feel like,

with their mechanical wings as they look at you through a microscope,

taking vitals, performing surgery.

anti-gravity is comforting,

weight taken off your shoulders and your chest.

but it's harder to breathe here,

so many miles away from the weight of ozone depletion 

crushing heavy against your chest.

diatomic oxygen is out, 

a fad left behind on another planet, 

in another life.

what's in is rp-1 kerosine, ammonium perchlorate, hydrazine —

you’re running off fumes left behind from rocket fuel.

everything up here is red:

spilling from between pale knuckles to dusty

sand under an unforgiving sun.

red on red on red on red on and on and on.

blood stains white teeth,

blood stains crimson sand darker —

bleeding out in outer space.

pray to the scientists that made you

that someone comes to collect your sun bleached bones,

to bury you amongst the corpses of exploration rovers.

maybe you'll be stardust by then.

it's not much, but if it's any consolation 

made a new constellation,

holes punched in the sky where you shot at the stars.

old, old poem i wrote about space exploration and transgenderism and angels :) i want to rework it eventually but i still think it's pretty cool as is, thanks for reading :D