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  • The Window Cleaner Writes to the Astronaut's Husband
  • Ruth Ellen Kocher (bio)

Now that she has not come back I will tell you. It is not that her face disappeared among the constellations or that you wake space-tumbled from sleep, the last digital glimpse of dark skin, her tied-back hair leaving you. You expect this way of mourning as you expect an open door to lead to a room which leads to another room, a corridor of blank walls that contain your passage. You are shaken by gravity. Each morning your feet touch the floor. You stand. You walk. The sink twists the light above into reflection as you brush your teeth. Understand it is pull that failed her, fails you— our insistent, magnetic planet, a wanting back what it dared release to a rocket's surge. Understand the physics of greed, the orbit of earth as a circle of want, the way we are each held beyond our will and that never, never, could it have left her free.

Ruth Ellen Kocher

Ruth Ellen Kocher, an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, Missouri, is author of three collections of poetry, Desdemona's Fire (Lotus Press, 1999), When the Moon Knows You're Wandering (New Issues, University of Western Michigan, 2002), and One Girl Babylon (New Issues, University of Western Michigan, 2003).

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