Stepping in shit
Everyone always says when you get to space
you will miss your friends
and you will miss your family
and you will miss your partner
and you will miss getting drunk
and you will miss having sex
and you will miss someone smiling at you
and you will miss a warm breeze
—a real warm breeze,
not what the shuttle processes and fires back—
and you’ll miss a real homecooked meal
and you’ll miss a dog barking
and people laughing
and being too hot and being too cold.
I was even told I would miss things like
sleeping through an alarm clock,
a nightmare in a real bed,
running out of hot water in a real shower,
stepping in dog shit,
getting a fucked up takeout order,
dropping the last bottle of beer,
driving over a nail.
Another person told me I would miss
finding out a cheque didn’t clear,
seeing my bank account in the red,
getting dumped and have never seen it coming,
even getting in a car accident.
Someone told me I would miss hating someone
more than I missed loving someone.
Someone else told me they missed the blowout
that caused the make-up sex
more than they missed the make-up sex.
And another person told me they missed the monotony
of the monotony.
One person
missed the neutral
and the boring
and all the things that don’t matter,
that never mattered,
that will never matter
and there are some things that just don’t matter.
After I thought about it all
—because what else is there to do
stuck up here
on your own
in this floating piece of scrap
for three years—
I started to wonder,
if I am alone
so far away from another person that
I am as far removed as removed can be,
do I even exist?
I haven’t been able to shake that question since.
No one warned me about this happening
when I signed up for this.
Everyone warned me about the little things
—sex and love and dogshit—
without telling about the Biggest Thing:
I am so far away
in every sense
that I am an abstraction.
I am an idea in the back of the mind.
It doesn’t matter
if my ship is hit by an asteroid.
Three days will pass before anyone even knows,
and that reminded me of life
before the technology that could put me where I am.
Things took time and maybe
the mailed letter arrived
and maybe it didn’t.
Sometimes the medicine is what did you in.
Funny that being in space,
locked in a shuttle,
this is where the world shrinks.
Out here,
alone in the void,
this is where my world is as small as it will ever be,
this is where I am living death,
this is where I am existing between worlds,
between realities,
between existence and non-existence.
And everything everyone told me is true,
even when they didn’t mention the same thing.
I miss laughing at stupid jokes.
I miss getting drunk on a Friday.
I miss not paying for parking and not getting a ticket.
I miss tipping someone more than I can afford.
I miss making a stupid joke to get a cheap laugh.
I miss complaining about the banal and the boring
and I even miss stepping in dog shit.
Stepping in your own shit just isn’t the same.
