She mistook love to mean the willingness to carry every emotion under the sun. So she swallowed all feelings, and for good measure, the sun—thinking—I can handle 386 billion megaWatts.
It really didn’t take long. Her teeth popped into sand. Her throat exploded like a star—and in this fresh state of senselessness she discovered a new color to describe night.
In it, she forgot her body. In it, she departed as air—moving to a quiet, safe, and intergalactic zip code. But there, she couldn’t speak—Was my voice my body? Was my voice a limb of the soul?
Being in outer space became more like memory—like lifting a seashell to the ear. Things were fine—O.K. But stale? She began to miss the human hobby of feeling—what made life, life. The tragedy wasn’t that she missed the days curving against a green horizon. The tragedy was being outside her body when the god for beauty called.
She repented by traversing time—shuttling between lucidity and bewilderment— What was even the point of getting so lost? Was forgiveness only an insight? But as she finally reached the atmosphere, dawn became her— “I was born to be somatic.”
On earth she returned to her container—Remember how my hands could go like this? She found the respect of the sun and its glow. She had hunger, clean water, and mountains as stepping stones.
Peace became the passing river. In her appetite, she only handled sorrow as long as it wilted. At home, she noticed the curtain veiling the light of the moon.