Top Secret

“Mapped into Matter” by Aaron Lelito

I met two astronauts
Who steal away to their ship every morning
And go on joy rides around the universe.  

They keep their spacesuits in the fronts of their minds
So they can get dressed in the minutes it takes for dawn to become day
And smiling to each other (from beneath and behind their helmets)
They leave the world to find something in the stars
That’s too small to see from earth.

I don’t know why they told me,
Because if I was gallivanting around the universe,
I wouldn’t advertise it to people who could quite possibly be
Government officials, or worse,
Russian spies.

But they told me, one day in a coffee shop,
While I was waiting (by fading into the countertop) for my latte.
There must be less oxygen, wherever it is they go,
Because they said all this without once taking a breath,
Exhaling sentences until they returned
To the breathlessness called home.

And when they were done,
I smiled at them from beneath and behind my helmet.

Alison Brown is a first-year at Yale University who enjoys reading Margaret Atwood books. She currently works as an intern at The Yale Review.