The Spiders from Mars or How I'm Spending Time After Quarantine

When Governor Murphy gives the okay, I’m out of here. Straight down the turnpike and  straight towards the sky to fly off in a thirty foot rocket full of cheese wiz and French Champlain. Ritz crackers lull me to sleep as I ascend & drift off through our compromised atmosphere. I float weightless around my new home as I journey on past the Moon past Venus to our first destination Mercury. 

On Mercury I catch up on my tan. Sixty days inside has left my complexion pasty and bleak. With SPF 1,000 and my worn out copy of Fight Club (or was it Catcher in the Rye?) I roam the land freely. With no other beach goers or any life around, Mercury is a nude beach population one. 

Next stop is Venus to cure my lonesome blues. On the planet of love I catch up with some old friends.  Venus herself greats me sweetly with her children Eros & Cupid. They serve me tea made from Europe’s frozen crust. I swallow moon beams whole and let them shoot out of my fingers and toes and the ends of my hair. Eros whispers into my ear as we hear a volcano erupt in the distance. Wind whips around my face as I kiss Venus goodbye and head to my next destination.

Life on Mars continuous as usual, I wander through Martian cities & run into Jim Morrison who’s been living here for years. Agelessly adapting to the Martian way of life. Jim tells me of all that’s happened on Mars these past fifty-years. He asked me what he’s missed and I don’t have the heart to tell him. So we roller skate around Mar’s craters and talk about which moon we'd fall in love with if they were human. Before I leave, he sings a song into my left ear, sad and lovely, by the time I’ve taken off I’ve forgotten all the lyrics but the melody drifts within my mind like a fly I can’t seem to catch. 

On Jupiter I take a break. Hot tub volcanos and endless margaritas. My mind wanders through time and space. I contemplate my life back home and all I’ve left behind. As the world heats up around me I get a sudden chill. The wind picks up and I’m swept into one Jupiter’s tornados. Weightlessly I fly 500 feet up into the air. When I finally land I glow pink, I’m starting to blossom. 

Saturn waits patiently for me. Floating through the air I’m mesmerized. I listen as Saturn’s rings sing around me. More beautiful than any sound I’ve ever heard, calming and subtle. I doze off dreaming of lemon cakes and pecan pie. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten something that hasn’t come out of a can or from a star. I’m starting to miss home.

I pass Uranus on my way to Neptune and decide to avoid it at all costs. I still have a warrant from the last time I crash landed on the bulls-eye planet.

On Neptune I meet a mysterious stranger. Fog surrounds me but under fourteen moons she's dazzling. She smells salt water and sea air. Before asking me to slow-dance, she introduces herself as Neptune. In movements that are fast and slow at the same time we glide around under perfect stars. Time expands, a minute lasts a lifetime, and a lifetime flies by. We dance for forty hours straight before I collapse on the floor. It’s cold and dark and I no longer know what I’m doing here. I fall asleep to Neptune French braiding my hair, and wake up alone. 

I meet U, F, and O on Pluto to end my trip skiing on what I still consider the ninth planet. I spend my time riding the slopes and drinking intergalactic hot chocolate. The snow on Pluto is lush and tastes like sugar. I roll around in it memorized by the sensation on my human skin. Time spreads back into my mind like snow rolling down a hill. I say goodby to my friends and get ready to head home. 

I’ve always wanted to explore outside of my own world, to float beyond the realms of my own reality. After spending sixty days or more enclosed in my childhood bedroom, the only place I longed to go was out of our world, beyond heaven, in the pursuit of new heights. Drifting among the stars unaware of time, and all the pressures place upon my future self melting off my humanly body. Transitioning from the Emily you knew, to the Emily I am now. Now facing the future head on, with all engines ready to go I blast:

"You're the sun, you've never seen the night

But you hear its song from the morning birds

Well I'm not the moon, I'm not even a star

But awake at night I'll be singing to the birds"

Through my speakers. As Mitski sings I grown closer and closer to where this all began. As I break through Earth's orbit the world gets bigger and bigger greeting me like an old friend. I'm finally home, the air smells clean, like spring, like dirt, like Earth. With feet on the ground the first thing I do is call you to come over. I roll up to your house at 9pm on a Tuesday, you're waiting outside with a pack of cigarettes, you ask;

"Got a light?"

& I breath out with Moondust still in my lungs:

"I've traveled 9,000 kilometers to give it to you."