The jumping spider who lives in my kitchen
longs to leap to the moon, 
to run fuzzy trichobothria over
her pitted-cheese surface

I watch him jump, each leap fifty times his body length,
relatively impressive, 
but objectively mere inches.
He rests on my chest,
mandibles twitching fretfully,
eight imploring eyes following the flutter
of my two nervous hands,
the corona of my frizzing hair
orbiting my head.

How can I refuse those eyes?
I smuggle him onto the shuttle
in the dark crater behind my ear.

Together, we surge upward, away, into weightlessness,
then back into lesser gravity. 
Together, we press hands and tarsi 
against polycarbonate helmet and pressurized space suit.

So close, yet so far,
like that inconsolable ache
in the heart of all living things
separated by immutable centimeters
from the inhospitable lunar surface,
from a beauty that kills.

© 2026 H.V. Patterson