Masks

Lauren Folk

Earth belched her billionaires into the atmosphere 

while I chose a mask for the day 

and wondered whether I should switch 

to a vegetarian diet for the environment. 

That year, I was briefly jealous 

of all those people who were 

filming TV shows, or on meditative retreats, 

or starting a cult in the desert,

 and discovered that reentry 

was harder than they thought it would be. 

I think that if I had been better at math— 

long division and multiplication, 

the trajectory of wealth in space and time— 

I would be an astronaut right now, 

warming my hands over the flames.