Found

I am finally coming home.

Lost my way home

I have forgotten how to smile,

how to frown,

how to love,

how to laugh,

how to cry,

how to feel vulnerable,

how to connect.

I have forgotten 

what it feels like

to feel,

to be loved,

to be cared for,

to miss those feelings.

I have been in the weeds for so long now

I wonder if I can ever make it back.

I know there is an end to this mission.

I know there is a way home,

albeit one way or another,

but I know it can happen.

I know I can land safely and,

I hope,

I can remember all the things I have forgotten.

I hope I can remember

how to remember

and

this time up in space,

the time seeing a red planet more than a blue planet

hasn’t changed me forever.

I worry it has.

I worry I am never going to be who I remember being.

All this time I thought space would be good for me.

All this time I turned out to be wrong.

Worst choice

I miss

my love

my life

my dog

my friends.

I miss 

walking

and running

and breathing fresh air.

I miss

a cold beer

a hot slice of pizza

a good cup of coffee.

I miss

being stuck in traffic

being shit on by a bird.

All the things I knew I would miss,

I miss.

All the things I never thought about missing,

I miss.

Leaving for space is the worst decision I ever made.

Seeing god

Mission control,

do you copy?

It’s Mudd here.

Shit is hitting the fan up here.

A giant ship just appeared.

I think it is a ship.

Some great monolith

a hundred times bigger than anything I’ve ever imagined.

I think it’s crystal, but I don’t know.

It reminds me of staring into a dead man’s eyes.

I’m scared.

I’m scared what this means for me

and

I’m scared what this means for you.

Do you copy?

Please.

Someone answer.

It’s already cold enough up here.

It’s already lonely enough up here.

I don’t want to face this alone.

I don’t want to die alone.

I wish I could come back home

and change everything I did that brought me here.

I can’t stop staring.

Is it god?

Is this the thing that makes me feel so small that

it doesn’t matter

what I am

or what I think I am

or who I think I am

or what I think about anything at all?

It isn’t moving.

It is just there,

floating.

Silent.

Mission control.

I need you to answer before

god does.

I miss you up here

When I first signed up for this mission to space,

I was told

not to bring any personal effects.

The space agency was pretty transparent that

I might not come home,

that I might die in space.

Why they wouldn’t let me bring any of my own things,

who knows.

Wouldn’t you think 

anyone with any compassion

would want

to make sure if someone were going to die that

they felt like they had more than

their own arms

to hold them?

You’d think so, right?

But, I listened to them and I followed the rules

because I’ve never been very good at breaking 

the good rules to break.

I’ve always been obsessed with safety.

I’ve always wanted to step between raindrops,

to somehow stay dry throughout the storms,

but it’s never worked.

And here I am,

off in the distance,

stuck up in the sky and so lonely

I think about dying every day.

I wish I’d snuck up something I love,

something more tangible than my thoughts

so I had some sort of tether to reality.

What I started to do was try to write

love letters

to my partner,

to the light of my life,

to the one who let me know

space doesn’t always have be endless

and what seems like the end

doesn’t need to be the end.

I miss her so deeply and so painfully

I wish I could just turn the ship around

and just come home.

I miss her laugh

and her smile

and her smell

and her way of touching my neck so I know it will all be okay.

I miss her way of telling me that not 

everything

is a catastrophe,

not everything will bring the sky down.

It’s hard not to believe the sky will fall though,

because there is no sky where I am.

I need Katy and I miss Katy.

Katy, I hope you get to hear me say these words one day.

You are my anchor in a world in which I am adrift.

I hope I find my way home.

Surviving re-entry

Ground control.

Ground control.

This is Henry Mudd.

Do you copy?

Do you read?

I am preparing for re-entry.

All systems are go up here.

Fuel looks good.

Heat shields look good.

Yaw and rotation look good.

Do you read me?

Feels good to be on my way home.

Can’t wait to land and see all of you.

I hope there’s a cold beer waiting for me down there.

A nice slice of pizza would be great, too.

It’s been something else being out here in the wild for so long—

Hold on a second here.

Ground control, are you reading me?

I’ve got something showing on my sensors here.

It’s coming in hot

right behind me.

Do you read?

Ground control.

Do you read me?

I’ve got something coming up on my tail

qui—

No one can hear you

In space,

the saying goes that

no one can hear you scream.

The truth is

no one can hear you

laugh or

cry or

mumble

or mutter or

moan or

stutter or

chatter or

gossip or

whine or

fart or

burp

or make any sound that matters.

Prodigal Son

I think and have thought

about death

more than most people do and have,

and that’s always been my way.

Being up here in space for so long,

waiting for little green men

and laser cannons and battle arrays

and continent-sized asteroids,

—earthkillers and starsmashers—

plagues and symbiotes,

radiation and cosmic disaster

will do that to someone.

The whole time,

even now as my long night in the skies

seems like it might come to an end,

as my calendar ticks towards the last day,

I never thought that it might be possible to return home.

Here I am though.

Here I am

staring at the calendar and wondering how

five years

has passed.

I stopped looking in the mirror

to avoid seeing how solitude

has greyed my hair

and lined my face,

how solitude has faded my eyes.

When I read back over my notes and my journals and my logs,

all I read is pain,

anguish 

over a decision I wish I hadn’t made.

When I land in a few days’ time,

this will all be a dream from which I wake.

The sights of stars and planets and comets and cosmic mist,

they will be consigned to memories no one else can share.

Maybe there are others who have been up here for so long

they lost their sense of self.

How do we find each other?

How do we connect?

How can we connect about the loneliest we’ve ever felt?

How can we connect about being so alone it doesn’t matter

what we think, feel or say?

Up here, nothing matters.

Down there, everything matters.

I used to believe

as above,

so below,

and now I don’t know.

One more sleep and I will program my ship to go home,

and I wonder if it really is home anymore.

I wonder if that’s ever something I can go back to.

I wonder if I will miss my long watch amongst the stars.

Sandblast shower

The shuttle has a shower that uses

air to blast away dirt and grime.

The water I do have is

precious

or at least as

precious

as filtered water from my urine and feces can be,

so it has to get saved for drinking and for cooking.

Showering just isn’t high on the priority list

for water use up here

and,

I guess,

I am more or less okay with it,

because what other choice do I have?

I remember when I was a kid and

I thought

about space,

I thought 

everything would be synthesized,

like there would be some sort of machine

that could just make things out of thin air.

There is a machine that takes a paste and makes it food,

and there is the purifier for the water and a scrubber for the air.

There is a system to keep the place running

and keep all the transmitters and computers going 

and there is a lot of technology happening,

but hot water is just a luxury.

No one wanted to make me too comfortable in space.

Funny how that goes, isn’t it?

When the call to go came along, 

it was all kinds of promises

and I guess that’s always the way.

“It’s all good, you can count on us.”

Reality? Two years into a five-year trip

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind.

I stink to high hell,

but I’ve smelled like this for so long now that I don’t know any different.

When I get back, I doubt I’ll have much of a taste for anything:

food,

or drink,

or music,

or good company.

Maybe the dream is for me to stay up here,

to ask to stay longer,

to tell 

command 

I’ve actually gotten

used to life

in space 

and

I can’t wait

to make this a ten-year term instead of a five-year term.

I don’t see that happening on my end,

but I wouldn’t doubt 

the question 

comes along.

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.

Lying at a funeral

When I let everyone know

I would be going on this mission past Mars,

I knew there was no coming home.

I knew it was the last time I would see anyone.

I knew it would be the last time 

I smelled someone,

or felt their skin touch mine,

hear a laugh,

felt lips press against my own.

But,

I didn’t tell anyone that.

What I told them was

how great an adventure it would be,

how I imagined explorers of days gone by must have felt.

While I knew there was a degree of naïveté to it all

—we all knew that—

it was harder to know I lied to everyone.

It’s hard to know I lied about being scared.

It’s hard to know the things I wanted to say,

wanted to tell everyone.

It’s hard to carry with me that I lied about it all

and there’s no way to change it.

When the booster jets fired,

I watched everyone die.

I watched them blink out in the distance

and they became memories.

I lied on their deathbeds.

I lied so much the lie became truth.

And now,

here I am

a mess of skin and bones in a metal ball

sending what will probably end up being

useless

information

back to a planet I left behind

and to whom I can never apologize.

Dr. Manhattan

I am as lonely as God.

Cease to be

The other day

I was looking at a photo

—a real photo—

of my mom and my dad and my brother

and another of

my partner, the love of my life,

and our dog

and I wondered if any of them miss me right now.

I wondered if they still think about me,

and, 

if they do,

do they think about me like I am

alive

or do they think about me like I am 

dead.

When I think about them,

I think about them like they are still alive.

I wonder what they are up to

and if they are happy

and I wonder if their favourite

meals are still the same,

if they have a new favourite record

or a new favourite book

or if they’ve found a new favourite chair.

I wonder if I am still alive

to them.

There are no new records up here.

There are no new books.

There are no new chairs.

There are no new favourite anythings.

I wonder if I am dead to anyone.

I always had a hard time putting my finger on

what it meant

for someone to be dead,

but I guess I have a pretty good understanding of

maybe

what that might be like now.

Deathwish

I have been up here for

so long

that

nothing means anything anymore.

God on Mars

Just before I boarded my shuttle

a man approached me

and asked if I thought

god

—his god, I assume—

existed where my shuttle was destined to go.

Those were funny choices of words,

I thought.

Does god exist where I am destined to go?

That sounds like a man

trying to convince himself

what he has believed his entire life

couldn’t be different anywhere else.

I never really considered the question

before takeoff,

and I can’t say I’ve given it

much thought

since I’ve been up here,

at least not in the way he was hoping,

I don’t think.

Imagine that,

trying to convince someone so you can convince yourself.

Does god exist in the stars?

Does god exist on Mars?

Does god exist a million miles away from my conception of god?

Was asking me 

supposed to be some sort of 

gotcha

moment?

Was I supposed to reconsider the voyage

to what might be

some 

godless 

frontier?

The funniest part

is I spend more time thinking about that man

asking me about god

than I do thinking about god.

Robinson Crusoe

I still dream about other people

even though I have been all alone up here

and have been for quite some time.

Last night I dreamt

about someone playing with fire

and burning themselves up.

I saw the blistered skin on their shoulder blades 

looking like wings were going to burst through

and I thought it was a funny play on Icarus.

I dreamt someone had removed all the stairs from a house

and I thought about what that would have meant for Sisyphus.

I dreamt, too, about going to work in a kitchen

and my colleagues suggesting my footwear might not have been 

the safest thing to wear,

and I wondered if safety mattered,

especially my safety.

And when I woke up,

I was confused for a few seconds

as I looked out the window of my shuttle

and stared into endless space,

into void that,

everyone says,

is only getting bigger.

I’ve been alone for ten years up here.

I haven’t seen another person in the flesh

in so long

I’m surprised I can even imagine what someone else looks like,

let alone still have the capacity to care.

Life alone so far away for so long

isn’t something I wish on anyone.

I wonder what Robinson Crusoe did.

I wonder how he survived.

I read once that the real man, the real Robinson Crusoe,

didn’t wear shoes for so long that his feet swelled

when he tried to wear shoes.

Maybe that will happen with me if I ever see anyone again,

but I imagine it will be my heart or my mind that swells

and I doubt it will be good for me.

Irish exit to Mars

The last time I spoke with my family was

before

I signed my life away to go on that mission to Mars.

I didn’t let them know.

I didn’t ask them what they thought.

I didn’t ask for any opinions.

I’d already made up my mind about the whole thing

and

I didn’t need anyone trying to talk me out of it.

What were they going to say anyway?

Would they tell me life on Mars would be worse

than the life I had down here on Earth?

Would there be anyone who could convince me to stay?

The dog maybe?

Maybe the dog could,

but what’s he going to say?

It’ll be me convincing myself to stay for the dog,

not the dog telling he can’t go on without me.

Since I made the decision,

a one-way trip to Mars,

I’ve had to tell my family

and I’ve heard it all.

How could you?

Have you thought about the consequences?

What about your mother?

What about your father?

What about your brother?

What about this

What about that

and on

and on

ad nauseam.

What about the desire to leave this blue world

and the desire to live on a red one,

somewhere with a rolling landscape of sand and rock

and mystery?

Yes, I will never make it home,

and the last time I see someone will be the last time I see someone,

but that’s no different down here than it would be up there.

I want to go somewhere I might find death around the corner.

I want to go somewhere that might drive a man to madness.

Death clone

I heard a rumour at the base

that they collect your DNA 

to clone you,

so when there is a tragedy

—when your ship explodes out near Neptune, for example—

there can be a survivor to cart around.

A pyrrhic miracle.

What a thing to do,

to deny 

one 

one’s own death,

to take a lie and make it true.

No one will verify it.

No one will argue it.

No one will raise a hand to question it.

After all,

if you die and no one is around to say you’ve died,

all it takes

is a replacement

to say you’re alive.

And so what,

who cares

if the clone is different?

Space just might do that to a man.

Being so far away might just rattle his brains.

Almost dying can have a funny effect.

Sometimes 

you

just

come

back

different.

Who knows.

Who knows why they collect your DNA,

but replacement is one rumour I’ve heard.

Last one to know

My shuttle is set to lift off

in less than a week

and I just saw on the news

—didn’t hear it from homebase first, just to be clear—

that one of our shuttles had been hit

by an asteroid 

in deep space.

And,

to be honest,

I’m not sure I believe it.

It is

very possible

that a hunk of ice and rock

hurtling through space

just crashed into the shuttle.

I suppose anything is possible.

Stranger things, and all that.

However,

my concern,

lies in the ability to get to

deep space

and not being able to detect an asteroid.

Something doesn’t add up.

Maybe it doesn’t add up because

I am due to

go so far away

that I might as well cease to exist.

Maybe that’s why I feel

a little uneasy

hearing about disaster through the news.

I don’t know why I signed up for this.

Connection in the stars

There are a lot of,

what I guess

are nights up here

where I think of everything

I miss

and I try to remember what it’s like

to remember all those moments

of connection.

I try to remember holding

my lover’s hand,

or the warmth of my dog’s tiny body

pressed against me,

or what it feels like to make 

a room full of people

laugh,

to hear the feeling of release and

the feeling of

worry

disappearing.

Up here,

past the clouds,

outside the atmosphere,

closer to the sun than I am to home,

connection is hard to come by.

Up here,

alone as I am,

lonely as I might be,

wilting along the way,

I wonder how many

can even

understand

the true weight of solitude.

Others who have signed up to man the stations

could have a sense

—should have a sense—

but maybe they know the feeling

too well,

too deeply,

too intimately.

There might be nothing between us.

I recognize the

grotesques humour there, too:

so deeply wanting connection

and knowing

there are others who know

exactly

what I am feeling,

how it settles on the chest,

in the guts,

weighs on the shoulders,

and wanting 

nothing

to do with anyone who can relate.

There is

connection

and then there is

too much connection.

I want it on my terms.

I want

my love,

my way

and to find what I need and want 

in my own time.

The sad part

—or one of the sad parts, I guess—

is that there is a chance I could die up here, 

never again touching

what I’m moaning about.

A chunk of ice,

broken free from an asteroid,

could smash through a window

or my air filtration system could fail.

My heat captures could break down.

My water system could crap out.

A fat lot of good

connection will do me

in my most desperate of moments

in the desert of space.

I will be so far away

that it doesn’t matter 

what I want or what I need.

If I make it back after this tour,

maybe I will 

be able to meet someone

who has been up here before

with nothing but their thoughts and their own arms

and they will be able to provide some comfort,

somehow let me know that there is a point to it all,

somehow let me know that

reconnection is possible.

Maybe they can let me know 

that no matter how faint hope might be,

nothing is forever,

not even forever.