From another perspective

In here up is down, left is right and nothing really matters. Earth is a tiny, glistening marble, so fragile… everything seems so small and insignificant. The tree in my parents’ backyard I used to climb, I know every branch and every leaf of that tree like I’d built them myself, but I can’t see it from here, as if it had never existed. I run my finger over the picture of my only child and smile. You are why I am here, I want to make you proud. You deserve it all. If I could pluck the Earth out of the sky and put it in a jar, I would do it, and I would take some stars too, and bring them back to you, because that is how much I love you.

*

I peer at the great green plains and think of how I used to lie somewhere in that greenness and look at the stars above my head, wishing I would be one of them someday. I think of the children who lie now, at this very moment, and stare at me, not knowing I am staring back. I dare only hope my own child is one of them. 

*

They used to call me spaceman, because I was always dreaming, always drifting off, my head in the clouds. I can’t quite recall what it is I was dreaming of, this very moment perhaps. It didn’t matter what it was, I wanted to be someone, I wanted to be remembered. My greatest fear was to end up just another dot on our great blue planet. I’m watching that very planet now, and I am so grateful not to be a part of it.

*

The world is just a blur of green and blue and white… humanity, life, none of it makes sense up here, it isn’t real. Time isn’t real either, not to me. It’s like I’ve been removed from the whole cycle and now everything is so quiet and peaceful, I’ve been frozen still, and I’ve never felt more fulfilled. I’m experiencing the fuzziest feeling, my body so light in my spacesuit, it might as well not be there at all. In fact, I don’t think it is, I don’t think I exist anymore…

*

I have never felt such overwhelming silence and clarity. I can see it, I can see all of it, the entirety of life as we know it, and it is hanging in nothingness. It is so immensely beautiful, I could never fully describe it, but I understand it, and it fills me with a sickening sadness, because it is a waste. We are cruel creatures, that is the truth. We kill and we wreck and we are not worthy of such splendour. I doubt this sinking sensation in my gut will ever leave, I mourn what we could have been but failed to be. I feel like an alien. I don’t ever want to go back, I know now, I know too well, we never should have been there at all.

*

My ship has come out of orbit and seems to be pushing deeper and deeper into the swallowing emptiness of the sky. I’ve forgotten why I’m here, frankly it’s been so long I can’t remember who I was before I came here. The silence and the darkness have taken over and everything else has faded away.

*

I can no longer see planet Earth, or the stars, or anything at all for that matter. I have slipped into the folds of the universe and will never be found again. I am gone, at peace, finally. The screaming, the wailing, the emptiness, the burning, all of the noise and the pain from my past life has disappeared. I am free, I am free at last. This is freedom, this is the freedom I dreamed of, the freedom at the bottom of the sea and above the clouds I yearned for all those years. I push the shuttle doors open and slide into the darkness. The black velvet is so warm and soft against my bare skin, numbness like I’ve never felt before. It grasps my feet first, then curls around my legs and digs its claws into my thighs. It pulls me forwards, coiling around my abdomen, squeezing my chest. It drags me farther and farther away from everything I have ever known. It presses against my ribs and I can hear my bones crunching. I cannot breathe. I squirm in its grip despite my best efforts not to. I don’t want to resist it but my body won’t listen to me. It doesn’t matter anyway, I am nothing compared to it. It latches onto my arms, pinning down every single one of my fingers. I can feel it folding around my throat. I gasp and I choke and I know my life is slowly pouring out of me and I will be quiet soon, truly quiet. Then I am quiet. And there has never been stillness as spectacular as this one. I don’t want to come down, wake up, I pray I never have to wake up again, pray I can stay here forever, not moving, not breathing, nothing. This is it, this is what I craved, this is all that is true anymore, this is me.

*

I wake up and my head throbs from the sudden return to reality. I try to focus on the details of my bedroom to keep it from spinning too much. The yellow curtains through which seep the early afternoon sunlight, too bright for my sunken eyes, the mold-stained wallpaper, that sound I hate so much of dishes clinking as they are being put away, life going on without me. The sheets are damp with my sweat, this bed is starting to feel more and more like a deathbed and I don't know how to resist. I didn’t want to wake up, not to this. I’m going to be sick, I can already taste it in the back of my throat. My mouth is dry. This is not the reality I want.