They said it either lost its atmosphere
or was an ocean world. Once there,
she was a lazy giant twirling, orbiting
TOI 733 the way a human girl moves
after smoking two bowls, all syrup
and swirl of smoke. Two-and-a-half
Earth-days of light, two-and-a-half
eternities of night. Have you camped
on an ocean? Blacker than black,
sky bleeds into sand and water and cliff.
I thought of my abyssal Pacific
as the barbarous bathtub of old gods,
but TOI 733 b, massive mother of sirens,
is the Platonic form of ocean,
the unfathomable fathoms I recall
from the first time I laid Island-child eyes
on the Atlantic, the idea of enormity
I chase when set free among the stars.
But space is an empty field, no body
to caress, to drown in, to take into
my mouth like a lover’s salt. She never
turns her face away from her star—
have you ever known such a dedicated
lover, all scorching breasts and frozen back?
Taking off my hotsuit for a starlit swim
was less damning than holding her
only in my head, untouched. I never even
screamed. Now I am a memory married
to immensity, a mind’s flickering reel
of cobalt sky and waves blown back,
red hair ashed from my skull, gone black.