Mars Won

Stardate 2025:325. We touch down on Mars. Flesh-colored dust settles around the capsule as the creaking, cooling fuselage ticks down to silence. Your face is pale inside the helmet; your hand grips the armrest between us. I think of your fingernails digging into my back, a shock of pain-pleasure distantly penetrating a mind preoccupied with release. The window onto this world is so small, yet the vista is endless. I breathe into my helmet until the visor fogs.

Stardate 2014:135: Friday night popcorn and Netflix. We're watching a classic, something black and white, with softness and silence and all the things that grant us power over life. "She's beautiful," you say, and I watch you smile with the starlet's smile, tilt your head just so. "Yes, she is." I look into your blue eyes and think of skyscrapers, dams, the great accomplishments of man.

You lean forward--I miss you already--and pour something from a black bottle you've hoarded all night. It says Baileys. I say, "No thanks, I have a beer," as you press a plastic cup into my palm.

"What is it?"

"Irish Cream." You smile.

"Sounds expensive."

"We're celebrating." Today we uploaded our applications to Mars One.

"I guess we are." We click cups. I drink. The taste is so smooth and sweet I want to melt into it.

Stardate 2008:114. Our third date. You invite me inside. "I hope my kitty likes you." I'm allergic to cats, but would never say it, not with you standing there in shorts and halter-top. Your legs are endless, your breasts peek with white-glimpse deference.

I see you see me staring and look away, face suddenly hot. "Putt Putt was fun," you say. I feel better. The cat hisses the moment I walk inside. Your neighbor, Jennifer, invites us over for wine and hot tub. You are even more beautiful in a bikini.

I borrow Jennifer's boyfriend's suit. "He won't mind." She's pretty too, but not in your league.

Stardate 2024:244. Tears float between us, salt and water bound by tension. Earth was a sphere bound up in tensions. Food wars, tsunamis, fires. Politics. It was no place to raise a child; that's why we came. That's why we're here. But where are we in this empty space, the darkness of it, the endlessness?

An arrow: You Are Here. It's too small to see with the naked eye. I reach to touch you. You shrug me off. I should not have slept with Jennifer. It was the boredom, I tell myself. It wasn't you.

Stardate 2019:253. "Let's get married on Mars." You blink. Your mother stares. Your father's fork clinks onto his plate. "What's that, like five years?" "Yes, sir." He looks thoughtful. "Damn fool thing'll never get off the ground if you ask me." Your Mother moves to the sink. Her steps are precise. Fragile. She doesn't want to lose you to Mars. She doesn't want to lose you to me. You watch her. I hate the worry in your eyes. I nod, and you leave the table, leave me alone with he who shall not be named. But it's okay, I understand that she's your mother. Your eyes seek mine over the cusp of her shoulder.

"Yes," you mouth. Yes, you'll marry me on Mars. There are no words for this emotion.

Stardate 2024:35. My pulse pounds against my eardrums. My chest goes tight. Our helmets are fixed into the restraints. I cannot see you, but I know you're there, you will always be there. System go, echoes. Go, go, go, one after another like cascading dreams. This is real, it's about to be real. Acid burns the back of my throat. I wish I could touch you. And then it's here. Ignition. Weight compresses me. I feel the shudder thrust through the soles of my boots. Static fills the suit. It feels unstable, unsustainable.

And then it stops, and we are gliding, climbing, shaking loose the tendrils of gravity that have so long held us down.