Space

”Everything’s a game

Antagonistic

Wanting to spar

🔝”

-Sean Killen

“You don’t understand,” she said. “This is history. Take a look ahead. No one in my family has ever left Earth.”

Jon laughed, but it came out brittle. “That’s because Earth is where people live. You’re talking about six months in a tin can, circling nothing finally.”

“It’s not nothing,” she snapped. “It’s orbit. It’s research. It’s a chance.”

“A chance to miss birthdays. Funerals. To float around while the rest of us stay stuck with gravity and bills.”

Mara’s voice softened. “I’m scared too. But I don’t want to wake up at fifty and wonder what the sky felt like from the other side.”

Jon looked at the ceiling, as if expecting stars to break through the plaster. “What about us? You think love survives vacuum and radio delays?”

She stepped closer. “Love survives worse things than distance.”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “Space doesn’t care about love. It’s discipline.”

“Neither does time,” she said. “But it keeps moving anyway.”

Silence filled the room, vast and heavy, like the space between planets