Katy the Astronaut

The idea that I could go up

into space

and not be alone was a foreign concept to me.

When I signed the paperwork,

signed my life away,

i assumed it was a solo mission,

just me and the machines,

just me and my thoughts

going up and never coming back.

Exactly why I felt and thought way,

I couldn’t tell you,

but I learned later on when I got to the training centre

that I wouldn’t be alone.

I saw her and I knew

maybe we wouldn’t be okay going up there into the great unknown,

but I knew we would be okay facing the great unknown.

Katy told me she never planned on being an astronaut.

It wasn’t something I’d planned either.

But, we were both smart

enough

to understand what they wanted from us.

Sometimes I wonder if what the space programs

wanted

wasn’t information about space

or information about the great beyond,

the Undiscovered Country,

but to see what all that will do 

to someone’s mind.

What will happen to someone’s heart up there for who knows how long?

Katy held it together better than I did.

For me,

it didn’t take long

for the madness to set in.

I lost track of time 

early on;

morning is midnight is three o’clock is nine o’clock

and on and on.

No winter.

No summer.

No young or old.

There were only two of us.

Maybe I was winter and she was summer.

Maybe I was death and she was life.

Could one of us exist without the other?

If she became my mirror, what would happen when one of us died?

I had a hard time framing the world

almost as soon as we entered the world beyond.

I used to know Sun and Moon,

but the sun is just another star

and the moon is just another body.

What else is shaken loose?

Katy asked me about all of this once.

What I thought and how I felt

and I told her I felt like gravity didn’t exist anymore

and she told me that I was right and I was wrong.

All the grounding things

I knew

still existed,

still had value,

still had meaning,

but they were metaphors

and allegories now

and I needed

to work

to remember

how they still meant something.

In a life without day or night,

without winter or summer,

we make those things in our hearts.

Of course,

one constant we didn’t leave behind:

the reality of death couldn’t be avoided.

When I ejected Katy’s body into space,

I watched god enter into the void.

The one who warmed my cold heart,

who allowed me to hold onto some sense of myself,

the one who breathed nothing but light into my soul,

when she left so, too, did all those things.

Now I am truly lost.