Marriages Like Rockets

Marriages like rockets
Launched at distant planets
Everything necessary
To propagate new life, new families, whole new worlds

Greater than the sum of its parts
Spreading like waves
Part of a hurtling cloud
Other rockets, satellite souls, come and go

Making kids now
New lives joining in
Rockets become stations
Serious now, plans, goals, not only survive and grow but win

Rocket’s getting rocky
Bumps, near crashes
Resources feeling strained
Tensions rise, maneuvering asteroids, gases, disasters

Hurtling through emptiness
Tiny metal box
Pressure feels too much
Any day it’s going to drop or pop from these knocks

Suffocating can’t breathe
These other people need so much from me
This can’t be the life I was meant to lead
Supposed to be an astronaut, not a machine

What happened to the life I dreamed
I’d live and be and do and see
Taking so much out of me
Can’t pause, but can’t proceed

Explosions out the window
First one then the other
And a third and another
Falling like shattered comets, you start to wonder

If they can’t make it work
Those beautiful ships outside
(We were at their wedding, so perfect, so happy)
How are we ever going to stay alive and survive this never-ending onward drive

We’ll die
I swear I’m scared
You and I we are not prepared
It’s just too hard, too high, too tight, too far

This screaming in my ears
Yelling back, I’m stressed, I’m grinding gears
I’ve lost myself in this monster that’s grown
The black hole’s not out there it’s right here in our home

You’re not the you I used to know and pursue
You’re somebody else I never even knew
And because of you and them I’m someone else too
I can’t stand my anal retentive control freak I’m counting again three two…

Breathe
Go to your room
I need to breathe
Need a release this is just not me

I got good grades in astronaut school
Thought I could handle all this stuff spacemen have to do
Not many rockets left now from our fleet
If they can’t hack it then how can we?

I wrote this after hearing about yet another marriage breaking apart in our broader circle of friends. There have been so many now, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of which marriages have survived and which have not.

This is sort of a part one. I’ve written more, but Wendy didn’t like the other stuff as much and it was getting long, so for now I’ll just publish this.

It’s much easier to lament pain and problems, and paint a picture of all that hurts and scares us, than to artfully describe solutions. Or if not solutions, at least some kind of balm for the soul (too cheesy?).

Well, writing this was my balm. Maybe it will be something like that for you too.

Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash