Passage

You help us all into the box.

It is shaped like a coffin.

We are to leave for Mars.

They say 

That Earth will be uninhabitable.

We are to lie inside

this box,

that is like a coffin,

for three days.

 

It takes that long to get to Mars.

 

For five hours I try 

to teach the children

to say,“uninhabitable.”

Their mouths fail to shape this noisy word.

 

I think about the

impossibility

of keeping 

the two-year-old quiet

 

or still. 

Three days.

I think of the improbability

of saving the child with Asthma.

 

I say, 

I’ll stay 

here on earth with our children.

Underneath sacrifice,

Artifice.

 

The anxious place 

of silence

in my deep 

and small space.

_