Biosphere 2
After the 1994 Arizona experiment in closed ecosystems.
We are all dressed in red.
I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t in love.
The man who stands in the center
of the press photos. His brawny bald head,
his ability to do one hundred push ups,
his passion for horticulture.
It just gets me. He knows
I exist but does he know.
The plan is to stay inside a year.
We feed the plants and flush
the toilets with water we
used to wash dishes. It filters
through the soil and when
it reaches the pond, we drink it again.
He ladles me a glass and grins.
It’s from my ass.
I laugh too hard.
Like the water, I go
in circles. Hating myself
for doing this; glad to
just be next to him,
tilling the soil in the soybean
plot, watching his cute butt
wrapped in red when he bends;
tastes the dirt. It’s too acidic.
As the seasons pass over
our glass ceiling, we all
get thinner and I love
him more and I’m even more
invisible to him, like one of
the translucent mites
in the desert area.
He starts to get worried
when his push-up count
is down to fifty. There
are six months left.
He fucks me in the tropics.
We are the only ones there,
collecting water samples.
He doesn’t look me in the eye
when his body is curled
over me, bobbing in and out,
a hermit crab. I know better
than to think this is about me.
He is losing himself.
I gave myself to him
a long time ago.
We are starting to get
headaches from the carbon dioxide.
I give him all the aspirin I brought
with me. We keep having sex
though I can’t feel anything
with all the ringing in my head.
When I faint, he’s still inside me.
Nine months in. Birthing time.
They pull us out because of
the fainting. The proof that
the air is too poisoned.
He won’t even look
at me. It’s been proven that we
can do anything, except this.
My love is sustainable
because it feeds itself.
Nothing goes out. Nothing
comes in. No energy is lost
in the loving. The only true
perpetual motion machine.
- Biosphere 2 - June 11, 2026
* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
