Human Chemistry

*Scratch, scratch, scratch*

went the impossible pen.

This story ends improbably. The life lead prior was a series of paradoxes and everything in between made about as much sense as the bookends. I was 240,000 miles from home on a great white rock hurtling through space, writing a letter to a woman who was famous for being a man and who’d just finished building me a rocket ship out of life lessons and moon rocks.

“We can’t choose the ones we love,” I wrote, “but we often make the wrong choice.”

and yeah, those words weren’t worth their weight in sappy, gooey, b-list literature, character origin-story, custom made for the big-screen but in medias res-olution, cop-out cliché bullshit, but

a couple minutes later I held the finished letter in my hands. I hadn’t addressed it or even sealed it in an envelope; its journey wasn’t far. Signing my name at the bottom, I looked up to my friend, a half-grin playing out along the corner of my mouth.

“I think that’s about… it. Yeah, I think I’m ready.”

She returned a comforting smile and held out her hand. “Let’s see it.”

Hesitantly, I handed over the paper and waited. It was the first time that I’d written something so personal. My armor—this callous emotional shell, fortified by years of snake- tongued, snowflake friends and loves like the flames from a beat-ass lighter—was starting to yield to a woman I’d met only yesterday. Even granting that it may have taken a cosmic theater of the impossible to crack the shell, this letter was still a huge step.

A minute later, she folded over the paper. Her eyes met mine.

“How is it?” I pried.

*tap, tap, tap* My foot on moon rubble.

The dim light reflected a spark in her eyes.

“You’re ready.”

My spirits lifted as a weight fell from my shoulders. I took one last improbable look up at the ground I thought I’d known so well. It was time to head home.

It was time to return to Earth.

Next Chapter