in search of goldilocks

the space between the stars and comets, in sleep, has become something else --quite like a nightmare.

something still and dark and untraceable.

there, mother and dad and papa still eat out of cellophane bags, sucking dried bits off the threads of hard plastic tubes.

the rocket engines burn fuel at an even pace, but we aren't aging fast enough.

our history was to make history but the path seemed unusually....foreign.

it all seemed like a giant stretch.

i didn't know "us" like mama and papa knew them.

the only ones we knew were them and they made us so it seemed even more vital we find this other place

of spinning water

paul would remember better than me

he used to match up his baseball cards, memorizing the stats, the teams -- the cast of characters.

he never lost track of that.  i love that about paul.  even now.

but we're only floating now, the vessel that carries us a pitted piece of metal.

at the center. we are the seeds slowly drying out.

still fertile yet hovering, only hovering

trillions of miles to sail on fumes

like i said before, i don't know "us" and i can't quite understand if i'm speaking truly and accurately.

the bodies are all zipped up in nylon bags, stacked neatly in rows.  apart from us and yet still a part of us.  they are the storytellers and the final chapter.

we won't make it.  we will not sip what was promised to us. 

in these spaces of quiet, i sometimes hear the gears clicking, the engines reaching to ignite, the fuel spreading into its veins.

paul doesn't hear anything.  i don't really expect him to.  but, in the starry darkness, he still makes me laugh.