Propulsion

When she knew she couldn’t keep me, my mother struck a bargain with the ghost men haunting the sky. She fashioned a ship from our placenta—my fuel, her breast milk. The cost of this launch came from her ignorance, her worship of the bone-pale deities that called themselves, stars.

I achieved escape velocity. I saw the ghost men’s bones for what they were: burned-up hulls. I begged to return. They said you orbit the gravitational field of a far greater ideal. God Bless.

But I couldn’t live these dreams. I go on, circling this planet I can never touch.