She's Out of This World by Renee Cronley

She’s Out of This World

She finds me on the precipice of sleep—

her icy fingers grip my mind

and melt it into pools of nightmares

and try to drown me in them.

She has planted herself inside me

like an artificial rose—I can pluck her,

but she never really dies.

That’s why I volunteer for these missions.

The Earth’s atmosphere is heavy with my sins,

but here in space, I feel the weightlessness

that allows me to rest in peace.

When I met her, she moved like a dream

I desperately wanted to have—

gliding across the stage, drawing out

every emotion from her audience.

I was a soldier, an astronaut, and a spy—

a stony-hearted triple threat that never

considered love until I saw her, reasoning

it was just a muscle I hadn’t tried to flex.

So I played house with her

as though she were an ornamental doll

that kept the house looking beautiful.

But she stumbled from her place on the shelf

into a pile of confidential documents

that shattered the fragile illusions we shared.

When they came for her, I had to let them.

My practiced indifference was a shield,

so I never thought of her until I shut my eyes—

where she still dances, lost in the music,

bathed under soft stage lighting,

but she stops as soon as she senses me.

Her once-innocent eyes blaze with crimson fury,

and her limbs twist at impossible angles

as she races toward me.

I always manage to wake up

just before she reaches me,

but the lingering fear still clings to me.

My last solid sleep was on my last mission— 

she has no pull here, so I gravitate to space.

Just before sleep claims me, I see her.

She twirls gracefully along the Milky Way

in a planetary ballet for an audience of stars.

She stops, her head slowly twists all the way

around her body to look at me.

She rushes at my shuttle, presses her face

against the window, staring me down

with vacant, bloodshot eyes.

She raises her hand and gives me

that slow wave, the same one I used

to get her attention the night we met.

The temperature around me drops,

and I can feel her cold fingers tracing

the blood vessels to my heart—

an insidious echo of how I got to hers.

She locks her gaze with mine,

in silent command, and her fingers

squeeze my heart until it stops

as she silently whispers, “Sweet Dreams.”