cosmonaut and astronaut and weightless

I am carried away, lighter than air, I am humming a tune, I am waving, my hands covered by gloves, my eyes by a screen. I almost feel like I am a feather, floating and dipping with the breeze, light, unfettered. And I suppose I am, in a sense, but my ascension is very much a pre-planned, orchestrated event, and I am heavier than a feather; something man-made is propelling me skywards.

When I think about this too much, I feel dizzy.

I think I see you get smaller and smaller even though I can't, I imagine your hand waving, backwards and forwards, and I know you are crying, hard, and I feel myself pushing back a painful, hot, tingly feeling behind my eyes.

I wonder, now, what I am doing. What was I thinking?

I imagine you at the dinner table, alone, with chat radio playing. They are debating abortion. Pro-choice, you stroke your belly and it swells, slowly. This is what I imagine. And it is too much.

I try to think about other ascensions, perhaps in a religious sense. I think this a good time to start being religious. Perhaps I am ascending to heaven, a rare individual. The bright sky and faded rainbow-colours and the crystals of moisture that hang there, sparkling; these are not simply earthly things, are they? There is more because there has to be more.

The walls around me shudder and shake. I am going fast. So very fast. I see blurs of black and gray and light. And then, eventually, I slow down, and I am weightless, even more weightless than a feather, and I close my eyes and imagine long grass, your black hair, the blue sky, and the stars I'm closer to now.

And I imagine the dinner table, and you, and I think of a new name: Valentina.

Valentina, I will not be long. And I will never leave you in this silence again.