Lane Jennings

SECOND HONEYMOON

(2101)

By Lane Jennings

You were 81 this year, and I am 93— mature enough to value solitude, the color grey, deep calm, yet young enough to feel the tideswirl still in our veins, the measured dance of expectation.

Moonborn and raised, the two of us, our bodies undiseased, our senses sharpened by clean light and perfect air, our only ache: the urge to leap up from this heavy stone into deep sky.

The night we married, long before our day of public promises, we chose a refuge for the years we knew would come: the years beyond all duties, all demands.

Now they are here. Our ship stands poised for encounter with the Belt— that borderrange of worlds dividing “far” from “near”— where asteroids school in formation through the sea of night.

There we will settle, share each other’s final decades undisturbed, exchange our passions steady as a windless flame.

Releasing engines roar approval for our dreaming. Hand cradles hand.

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