Helios 1.2

The rack room was still when Harvey got in. He thought for a moment that Reder and Atticus might have been out on an emergency repair until he got close enough to hear Reder's breath behind the curtain. He turned around to see Atticus was wide awake, his eyes on him.

 “Harv.” Harvey nodded, acknowledging Atticus' lukewarm greeting, and crawled into his rack. He slid the curtain down to the end of the cubby.

 Harvey was glad to be alone—as alone as he ever really seemed to be in this ship. He thought often of all those millions of miles of emptiness that surrounded them, and it was briefly comforting, until the realness of it all settled in on him with its muted terror. Harvey reached into his shirt and pulled out a second set of tags and hung them on a small metal protrusion from the rack above him. They clanked lightly and Harvey quieted them with his palm. The tags weren't his, and he knew that he would have to stop wearing them soon, or someone would eventually call him out on regulation. But not just yet. Harvey wasn't ready to let go.

As Harvey closed his eyes, he felt that same sensation he had felt for the last three months; that his pupils, which felt heavy, like two stones fixed in his head, had sunk all the way to the back of his skull. His eyes must have been open for a century. After all, he reasoned, watching was his job. Harvey, the night watchman, guardian of a vast, drifting space.

If only he could have been there to see her on that night. He imagined her body as it might be now, a careless array of limbs, somewhere, behind untold miles of space, three months of space, in fact (had it been that long?). Harvey wasn't sure. At least there was sleep, black and unmoving, as sightless as—and he stopped himself, because of the long knife of pain that drew through him. He crushed his eyelids together and wet his cheeks with tears. At least there is sleep.

There is a gilded bulb
That lives in my heart,
And surrenders, as the desires that tend it,
A dark and venomous bloom.
   
 Mornings I wash with the peaking trill
Of violins, notes that dash              
And break                            
Like the lines that mrk the same stretch
I drive each day to work.

Its petals are suggestions.  
Words, like half- used spools of thread, or
An earring, uncoupled,              
Collected for years,
So I might, someday,      
Have the chance to say something
Truly beautiful.

Helios 1

On the first morning of its 135^th year, the heart of the Helios skipped.

It was a breath or a hiss in the hull of the ship, barely appreciable, even to most of its systems. Two bodies were up and moving now on the bridge. The night custodian, now relieved, was making his way down to his rack. Alex watched for his dark shape in the small slip of space near the top hinge of the door. As he passed, Alex took a single, deep breath, and exhaled slowly. As he expressed the last cubic unit of oxygen from his lungs, he heard the custodian make his customary, singular rap on the wall.

“Fuck.” Alex’s mother woke to the resounding bang. He shifted his eyes up to her rack before closing them tightly. As far as she knew, the noise—which happened every morning that Harvey was on night watch—was mechanical.

Alex lay quietly in his rack and waited for his mother to come wake him. When she finally did, after shuffling to and fro in the small space that they shared, it was by brushing his shoulder gently. Alex rose up, sliding his sheets down and standing at his bedside. His mother was in her uniform already, neatly pressed and still clinging to its dark blue color in spite of 5 years of duty as her only uniform.

“It’s math today.” She said, addressing Alex’s shadow in the mirror as he dressed himself behind a small privacy screen. Alex nodded his head silently. By the time he had fastened the last snap on his jumpsuit, which had grown too small for him and now crept up around his ankles, she had gone.

Chema poured the flakes into a bowl, dousing it with thin splashes of a milk-like liquid. Angel walked through the door.

“You’re late.” Chema said, pouring another cup of the flakes into the bowl. Angel walked to where Chema stood, taking a large spatula from the wall, and began to churn the mixture. Chema stood back with the pan of liquid, pouring it into the mix in regular intervals.

“He was at it again today.” Angel said, continuing to work the flakes, which had become a paste.

“Who?”

“Harvey. The same place, again this morning.” Chema spilled the last of the liquid into the bowl. “It’s only Atticus and Reder in there right now. The other two racks are empty.”

“I wonder how long Reder will put up with it.” Chema said, taking the sides of the bowl firmly. Angel held the spatula in his fists and cut hard through the mixture. It had become thicker now and harder to move through, and sweat began to shine at his brow.

“He won’t. At least he wouldn’t if he knew it was Harvey. This ship is like a bell. Can you imagine how loud it must be in that room? And near the captain’s quarters, too. Harvey better hope that nobody finds out.”

Chema raised her eyes to Angel with a sharp little smile.

“And you won’t tell?”

“No.” Angel said, drawing the spatula from the mixture. It filled the bowl now, and continued to rise on its own, a small mountain of off-white paste. “He’s in mourning.”

Chema nodded. Harvey had been through enough. 

These wild feelings,
long looks, insistent
pressing of the hands

If I could have you without conscience,
I would have you.
I would retreat into
the cavernous want.

It makes a monster
our bodies moving, and somewhere
the sound, the friction,
and love, silent, consuming.

Professional Stranger

Your mouth was made for goodbye;
always some iteration of an "o",
as if to say you were never really there at all,
a null set, an empty flutter of the pulse.

A cold emotion stills me.

We make small talk
while I size up the distance--
too many miles
for such a small passion.

I see you now: the traveller,
the professional stranger.
When I go, you hold me close,
to leave your memory clinging,
to plunge your absence prematurely in.