Pele’s goddaughter, life-coach,
personal trainer, investment counselor, spiritual director; contralto,
popular Luna City council woman, Denia
first earned her acceleration couch
on the regular Tuesday SpaceX run
to Tycho Under, a mere slip of a girl:
4.0 MIT undergrad, hoka-hey!
Starting striker for Pele’s own
Honolulu Sweethearts,
(league champs 2036). And a hotty...
Going stylishly gray now, Denia remembers
waiting for that first liftoff, remembers
(or will remember, it’s much the same) calming her nerves,
going over personal baggage in her mind:
cloud files of family tintypes, Polaroids, brownie b X w’s,
all the brilliant ones of Mai-mai; all
the ones with the horses, (exotic as wookies to her); the ridiculous one
on the surfboard with Sienna and her mom and dad; the old one
with the three little boys watching the amused father
in his brown paper bag hat, what was his name,
mixing waffle batter - all long gone now, all but one precious white-haired old man
calling on her birthday: “Remember
that funny picture?” he asks now everytime.
“Yes, Nonno,” she says, “Yes, of course I remember.”