Satellite of Love
Relationships carry us far from home
Lift Off
We blasted off that night on our joint mission, up through layers of decreasing resistance, through rarefied air, away from the turbulence of our lives, and at that time, we burned white-hot as the payload jettisoned and we drifted into the blissful tranquillity of space, staring back in wonder, two satellites guided by each other’s blips and bleeps.
Orbit
As we traveled around and around, the years passing, we fell into a pattern of signals and silences, with burning desire transformed into morning briefings, precision operations, and the occasional corrective thrust, and like this we circled, pretending that our steady progress was just as exciting as the initial countdown, and in our orbit, we looked down at others, wondering if they could reach us without help, but whereas I stepped in with way-finding pointers, you found flaws and imperfections, and the beauty we saw diverged, with me drawn back towards to the launch site, and you slowly drifting off line, our bond loosening as every day you asked me to reach further into the darkness, to bridge a gap that neither of us could compute.
Lost Signal
When I crashed back to Earth, I thought I heard your voice still guiding me away from catastrophic failure, directing left or right, with me merging into the flow, then exiting, folding back on myself like a twisted used-up tin can, recalculating past behaviours, praying for those words ‘you have reached your destination’, and finally arriving there, my scorched feet crunching the driveway shingle only to find that my destination was no longer a home because you had left years ago, and as your velocity sped you far away, into eternity, your voice weakened and cut out, before silence washed over… and I learned to navigate on my own.
First published in National Flash Fiction Day Flash Flood, 2021
Philip Charter is a writing coach from the UK who trains multilingual content professionals. He is the author of two collections of short fiction and Fifteen Brief Moments in Time, a novella-in-flash. He hates oranges but likes orange cats.