5 Year Mission
Contributed by
Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 07/12/09
He gave me the mobile the last time I saw him.
Half memento, half joke:
Crystal stars and hearts
For the space-girl that he loves.
The first time we dropped out of Z-drive,
The power surged,
The gravity dropped out,
And the mobile tangled.
(And it’s just dumb luck that somebody had the foresight
To serve life-support on a seperate generator.)
Relationships are built
Out of shared experience
And he’ll never see
The things I’ve seen.
…A hundred-strong crew,
And each new thing so wild,
That it makes us ask questions
That we can’t share.
We’re all alone out here.
Apparently love
Can’t survive in open space.
Like everything else.
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Rivka Jacobs
This is an extraordinary piece of writing, Nick. A poem, a story, a comment on the nature of relationships, and matched perfectly to the picture. I mean, it couldn’t be a more perfect evocation of the picture. The last stanza is remarkable, beautiful: “We’re alone out here./Apparently love/can’t survive in open space./Like everything else.” Moving and poignant.
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Why, thankyou, Rivka! I always flinch a little from poems, so it’s always interesting seeing what might happen when I write one!
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