DUST BENEATH my fingertips reminds me of where I’ve been. It happened so fast, falling into this dream; it happened so slow. The gravity of Earth seemed to crumble away, and I rose from the ground, inching toward the clouds, the stars, the sun, destiny.

You. Moonflower.

I don’t know how to make sense of it. I looked to the moon and it shone without fear, full and close. On it I watched flowers grow from cracks in the desert road, glowing luminous as pearls. Pale blue dust fell from the surface of their petals.

The white-hot light pierced the glass of my helmet and spoke to me, urged me without sound. We played in the dust and dirt of this rock we call home, and as we did, something called to us from there — a voice in the moonlight. Blue as the sea, crystalline as diamond, it told us to leap.

We reached the light of the moon, a wasteland through which we travel, floating, as happy as I’ve ever been, following broken desert roads among soaring cacti, stalking coyote, scrambling desert mice.

I didn’t know this wasteland belonged to you, to us, for this peculiar moment in time. We were waiting to bloom beside the roadside flowers, persisting for a moment we couldn’t know would come from leaping toward the stars — not for one another, but for ourselves.

So we floated through space, and the light brought us here. We were lost for years, looking for ourselves, following the same earthly desert paths again and again. Then, the paths ran dry. I’m ready for a new sort of adventure.

You laugh at the crow’s feet of my eyes as I look to far-away suns. Your eyes follow, shining like ocean waves. Staying terrifies me more than what we might find straying.

For now, we wander on our own. You’re needed here on Earth.

My body feels heavy, then weightless, everything and nothing. Space cowboy, held by the clouds when lord knows I need holdin’. Hop on a plane when I don’t know where I’m goin’. Fissures in the desert road split through the sky, space cowboy kickin’ dust on this Earth to fly.

Will you fly with me? You have your journey and I have mine; hold my hand, dear. Time falls away, and we decide to go or stay. I want to go; I want to see; I want to walk this earth while my heart keeps beating. Why does it beat? Am I meant for Earth? I look to the lunar wasteland.

Walk, son. Keep walking with that heart wide open.

At the international space station — waiting — feeling the energy in my body, my heartbeat quickening with affection for this journey. This place represents what I love.

People as paint as strokes as scratches as moondust, dripping across an empty canvas of experience; quirky interactions and the smell of rusty space coffee permeate metallic halls where human beings exist, aliens persist, bound for distant galaxies.

Work. Play. We’re all going somewhere. I’m made to feel the mysterious pangs, daggers of the unknown. It’s the first page of a new chapter, the budding roses of a fresh garden. Change. I’m happy to be alive, even when it hurts. The peaks mean nothing without valleys, when life fucking sings with color and depth and the pain of saying goodbye. I’m happy to be alive.

Halloween decorations are irreverently pasted on the walls of the station. They make me smile. The world is turning. I love this time of year, chilly mornings, an evanescent summer sun.

But even when times are good, I wonder what’s to come. I am afraid. So much in the world that doesn’t make sense. But we got each other, and we got love. That’s all that makes sense to me.

The warmth of a candlelit room on Earth. A hand to hold. An asteroid flying through the solar system. These are part of the human experience, a worthy trade for the eternal darkness beyond our mountains and riverbanks, deserts and shores. Is a hand to hold really what makes life worth living? Our armor of light against darkness?

Yes.

I leave the station and soar over you as you keep along the cracks in the road, both going where neither of us can know. And isn’t that something? My body racked with emotion. That means we’ve seen one another.

We’ve seen each other.

Our hearts beat as the world turns and we’re caught in something bigger than anyone can understand. I cried beside you. I couldn’t close my eyes, wondering if it would be the last time. There was more to say, but I didn’t know what. There was nothing in the darkness but your breathing, so I listened, unable to let go.

I am afraid. I feel sadness in the drops of autumn rain, a pain I don’t know from where it derives, pain as deep as the forests of your eyes.

Grateful for the feelings; I welcome the pain. I know it can’t last long. It’s nice to feel emotions here in the station where I can’t find the space to be alone. I can’t be alone in what I feel.

Caught in this web of time sprung from coming home, weeks gone by; you’re the piece of Earth I miss the most. You hold my heart in your hands, and I wonder if before we met my heart was beating, and it knew that you were out there breathing too, waiting, living, building you so that one day we’d be ready, and I’d find you in the empty orange night, and we’d run.

It’s nice to feel it all. Dark night overcome by morning light. Soaring through the galaxy, joy creeps into the shadows of my soul, knowing that I’ll see you again, out there in the stars.