The Listening Planet

 

I am alone when the flower moves.

That should be the first thing I write, if the recorder is still working, if anyone ever finds the ship, if anyone ever listens to a dead woman talking to herself on a planet that should not know how to listen. I am alone.

The others are still asleep in their clean white coffins, three hundred meters behind me, behind the hill, behind the sealed door I closed because I wanted the first step to be mine, selfish, stupid, human. I wanted a private miracle. I wanted one moment not shared through glass and reports and trembling voices.

So now it is mine. The flower turns toward me.

It is taller than I am, pale and soft-looking, though nothing here is soft, not really. Its petals are thin like skin over a candle. Light moves inside them. Slow. Blue. Blue like veins under a wrist. The center is black, and I do not like that, because it feels less like color and more like depth.

I say hello. My voice sounds ridiculous in the helmet.

The valley answers. Not with a sound. Not at first. The ground gives one small pulse beneath my boots, as if something huge has opened one eye far below me. The silver grass bends away, then back, then away again. A line of red light runs through it, root to root, hill to hill, a message too fast for me to understand.

I should go back.

I take one step forward.

There are trees here, if trees can be called trees when they grow in spirals around empty air, when their leaves are shaped like little hands, when the fruit hanging from them is clear and full of tiny storms. One fruit breaks open as I pass. Not falls. Breaks open. Inside it, a mist curls out and becomes, for one second, a bird.

No, not a bird. A memory of a bird. Then it disappears.

I laugh because there is no one to hear me laugh, because fear has to leave the body somehow, because if I do not laugh I might start saying my mother’s name and then I will not stop.

Something runs across the path. It is small, knee-high, made of light and bones and too many legs. Its body is transparent. I can see sparks moving through it like thoughts. It stops when I stop. It has no face until it looks at me. Then the face forms, badly, as if copied from a reflection in broken water.

Two eyes. A mouth. Mine.

I whisper no.

It opens its borrowed mouth. No sound comes out, but my visor fogs from the inside.

I should go back. I should wake the others. I should be a scientist, not a child at the edge of a dark room, not a thief stealing wonder and finding teeth inside it. But the river is singing.

I can see it below, cutting through the valley, not water, never water, something clear and slow and filled with lights that rise and sink like breathing stars. Black reeds grow on the bank. They bend toward me before I reach them. They know where I am going before I do.

Maybe everything here is plant. Maybe everything here is animal. Maybe those are Earth words and Earth words are already dying in my mouth.

The little creature follows me. Step, step, step. My shadow becomes its road. When I kneel beside the river, it kneels too. When I touch the surface with one gloved finger, every light in the river comes up at once.

The valley goes still.

I see myself in the river. Not my helmet. Not the suit. Me. My face at seven, at nineteen, at thirty-four. My face sleeping in the ship. My face dead. My face opening like a flower.

The recorder says my pulse is too high.

The flower on the hill says my name. Not aloud. Inside.

Mara.

I fall backward and tear my glove on a stone. The alarm screams. Air hisses. My skin touches the ground. Warm.

The whole planet shudders.

For one perfect second, I feel it all. Roots under roots. Blind white animals turning in the soil. Flowers drinking starlight. The floating herds above the clouds. The river carrying memories instead of water. The great slow mind beneath the valley, waking, curious, gentle, enormous.

Lonely.

That is the worst of it. Not hunger. Not malice. Loneliness. So old it has become a landscape.

The little creature touches my bleeding hand with its almost-human fingers.

Behind the hill, the ship calls my name. In front of me, the planet does.

And I realize I was wrong from the beginning.

I did not come here alone.

I came here first.

The First Crack

 

There are two cups on the table.

One is his. One is hers. Hers has a small chip on the side, and when she laughs and lifts it to her mouth, he almost tells her to be careful, as if the entire morning could cut her lip.

The kitchen is warm. The window is fogged from the kettle. Outside, rain falls with the tired patience of something that has done this forever. She sits barefoot on the chair, wrapped in his old sweater, and tells him about a dream she had, something about a train station and a dog that knew her name.

He smiles.

He is happy.

That is the problem.

Because happiness has weight. It sits on his chest like a hand. It asks him what he will do when she stops reaching for him in the middle of the night. It asks what he will say when the messages become shorter, when the silences become longer, when her eyes begin to look at the door before they look at him.

He watches her thumb move around the handle of the cup.

Already, he sees the future.

Not one future. Many.

He sees himself saying the wrong thing at dinner. He sees her forgiving him once, then twice, then less. He sees a walk in December where their hands are inside their own pockets. He sees the first lie, small and polite, not cruel enough to fight about. He sees a day when her toothbrush is gone and the mirror looks too large.

She asks, “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” he says too quickly.

She tilts her head.

It is a small gesture, but it opens something in him. A little trapdoor. Under it, all the old rooms are waiting. The room where love became duty. The room where duty became silence. The room where he was told he was too much, then not enough, then nothing worth explaining.

He wants to tell her everything. He wants to confess before the crime. To say: I am afraid I will love you in a way that makes you leave. I am afraid you will see me clearly. I am afraid I will see you clearly and still not know how to keep you.

Instead he reaches for his cup.

His hand shakes.

The spoon inside it hits the porcelain once.

A tiny sound.

Her face changes.

Not with annoyance. Not with pity. Only attention.

That is worse.

Attention is the beginning of tenderness, and tenderness is the beginning of loss, because now there is something to lose.

“What happened?” she asks.

He could say nothing.

That word is a door he knows well. Nothing. Behind it, entire houses burn.

He looks at the two cups. Hers chipped. His shaking. The rain on the window. The sweater falling from one shoulder. Her bare feet tucked under the chair. All these dangerous little proofs that a life can begin without asking permission.

“I’m scared,” he says.

The words come out plain and ugly. They lie between them like a dropped knife.

She does not move away.

For a second, he almost hates her for that. If she moved away, the story would be simple. If she laughed, if she sighed, if she became cold, he could point to the wound and say: see, I knew it.

But she only reaches across the table and touches the back of his hand.

Her fingers are warm.

“Me too,” she says.

The rain keeps falling.

Nothing is fixed. No angel comes down to bless the kitchen. No future closes its mouth. He can still see all of them, all the endings, all the ruined Decembers, all the empty mirrors.

But her hand remains on his.

And for once, he does not pull it back to protect what is already broken.

For once, he lets the cup tremble and does not call it a crack.

Free

He looked above at the sky and felt a yearning he had never experienced before.He wanted to suddenly grow wings and take off towards the heavens.To soar above fields, cities and mountains, to circle the immaculate clouds, to hover over lakes gently touching the water.To feel alive and absolutely free.
He closed his eyes and felt exactly that.For a second or two, until he opened them and looked down, and the cruel reality that was his wheel chair settled in.

Caution

Hush, my little heart, be still.
No need to gallop at her will.

Better stop and think this through,
Else I'll once again be blue.

Revenge

  And it all comes down to a whirlwind of fury, eating away at your very core, drilling through the depths of your soul, leaving behind only ashes...It devours you indiscriminately, without logic or meaning, until nothing is left...

In the Blink of an Eye

In the blink of an eye,
You could have a revelation,
See the world anew.

In the blink of an eye,
You could fall to pieces,
Kneel down and cry.

In the blink of an eye,
You could win the jackpot,
See your dreams come true.

In the blink of an eye,
You could lose everything,
Be humbled by the odds.

In the blink of an eye,
You could fall in love,
See yourself fulfilled.

In the blink of an eye,
You could die...

Shy

  She threw me a long lingering look and I felt like I was lost.I wanted to grab her and lose myself in a passionate kiss.But I didn't.I was afraid.
  Something inside stopped me.I just kept looking at her, feeling completely helpless.
  Her smile sent me in a daze.I felt otherworldly.I couldn't say a word.I only wanted to look into her eyes, to get lost in the blue abyss that they were.
  She was mumbling something I couldn't understand.I couldn't because I only wanted to taste her lips, to feel the sweet sensation of a kiss.Yet, I only stood there watching her.Because I was afraid, afraid to spoil the moment...