It Has Not Been Autumn For Seven Years

Macaroni is boiling in a pot on the stove.
The pot is burnt--it smells
like burnt toast.
The macaroni tastes like rubber.
A tire is rubber.
It tastes like a tire.
A tire is black like the sea,
or maybe like space, endless as my heart.
Or maybe like the burnt stuff at the bottom
of a pot of boiling macaroni.
The astronaut is falling. Falling.
Can you see him, spinning through air,
falling like a leaf in autumn?
It has not been autumn for seven years,
and still you are falling,
dangling on a thin string of hope.

-Published in Aught Magazine