"The Astronauts"

A single planet, single moon, follow around single sun in an infinity of circles and it takes an eternity to return to the beginning. They trace this pattern, these astronauts seeking space. They are satellites traveling in revolutions, never making up any ground. All are equal on this plane, chasing each other, chasing the moon, the sun, the planet. Never ceasing either in end or beginning.

***

"Feeling better now," he says into the microphone. Green at the head with a black mesh eye, it's neck, coiled and silver, extending down into the console. He pulls it closer to his lips. “I got sick this morning.”

The glass beside him, as he turns his head, clouds with the the warmth of his breath on the cold pane.

“I was eating your favorite cereal. The one with the blue and the pink bits with the white marshmallows in it. It's so sweet.” His finger bends into a hook and he rubs it over his upper lip to stifle the laugh. “I folded back the top of the carton and pushed it out to create the opening and then poured it and when I leaned over to smell, it smelled - - well, it smelled like milk.”

“I thought about how many fewer times it'll be that I smell that. Then no more milk. No more eggs, cheese, meat, bread. Your cereal gone, all along with you.” When he was hunched over the bowl of cereal in that small space, the bright orange spacesuit colliding with the glowing white of every surface, he reached out with a single white-gloved hand and lost it. Space fell in on him, turned him around and he fell.

His hand reaches up to the large blue sponge taped to the crown of his head. His hand returning has blood on the fingers. His fingers press to his lips. He puts the blood there and looks up at himself in the overhead mirror.

It resembles a kiss.

***

“Steps to staying alive in space,” she says. She pauses. She breathes.

“Keep on,” coldly states the box in the corner from it's large recessed hole. Above there it blinks with one red eye.

One coal black hand runs up over her face, fingers lacing into red hair, shuffling it out, burning white embers falling and fading away from the strands before hitting the gray grating of the floor. One foot steps forward.

“Step one. Turn around.”

“Keep on,” it says.

“Understand what it is. Look straight ahead. Focus. Keep it clear in your eye sight. Make it out. Tell what it is.” The edge of clear fingernail paints a line in the leather of the straps cutting into her skin. Long, blue, extending out from her back, the machine skips and whirs, keeping her alive in the negative space. The wheel inside winds up, unwinds.

“Keep on,” the box replies.

“Keep on,” she says.

“Repeat.”

“Keep on.”

***

Dusky glass collapses on the golden metal wings that extend up from the neckline opening of his spacesuit, contouring his head. A clasp fastens and faster goes the man toward the door. It is broad orange in color with the texture of an orange. Flips switches on the box beside, creaks it open by the long metal handle, white paint grooved away from use, moving in a semi-circle and release, the air rushes out and pushes him into the space. The small orange ship moves away behind him.

Taps the gold teeth on the front of his mask and green lights up between them.

“Go for recording.” In a small square breast pocket, a tape deck switches on and the grooves turn the sprockets rubbing the tape between them against a brush.

“I figured it out.” A headlight casts him back in light and in the darkness ahead of him the planet is black, ringed by the light of the bright star ahead of it. “We're traveling toward each other, but in the same direction. You're trying to get back to me, I'm trying to get back to you and it's not working. We have to go through it.”

Click. Stop. He makes a closeted fist and beats on the square of his chest. The green restarts between his teeth.

“I'm going to stop right here and wait for you. When you get this message, wait for me,” he says, wafting somewhere between the planet and the ship.

***

“Message ends.”

“Comma, next,” she says to the metal box. It blinks at her.

“Message ends.”

Dark foot rubs over dark foot. She pulls them back, extends to the floor and rises from the white chair, red-cushioned. Spins. Faces back. “Go through it,” she says.

“Go through it,” the metal box repeats.

“Go through what?”

“Message ends.”

“Last message?”

“Unknown.”

“It's all unknown. Step Four. Final step.” Gripping the dark wood rail that runs around the circular single room of the spherical ship, she grips, looks out the single window at the sun. “Go through it.”

“Message ends.”

Places hand over hand over hand, reaches for the door, rubbing her bare black toes through the green shag doormat, she takes a deep breath.

“I'll be right there.”

Very deep breath. Holding. Reaching up over her shoulders, leather straps trapping breaths against her chest, turning dials up, up, up. The wheel inside winds taut. Opening the door and pushing off from the outside, she falls, falls, falls into the sun behind.

***

Crystals form in his eyes, fragmenting the darkness and the light. Click, whir. His arm extends by the elbow and the shoulder and the hand taps one golden wing.

A voice. “Step four. Final step. Go through it.”

The color on his coloreless lips, red, shakes. “I'll be right here,” he says.

“I'll be right there.”

Click. Stop.