2035

by MAYA WHITE-LURIE 

For decades we searched ambient oases, pulsing body clouds, red giants, 
blue dwarf glare, moons wet with methane seas. We mapped Earth’s neighbors 
to the millimeter—every hill gully hollow—to mark a landing site. We packed the ship,
checked the specs. Unfurled the solar sails and thrust out for our new world.

We ogled our moon in reverse, slept the route with exercise alarms, system
diagnostics, messages from home. Text only. We trusted them to watch
our small steps. Some of us learned to pray—for safe landing, for oxygen
pressure, for father sister sick cousin, for mission control. Something worked.

Each day we crumble clay like cat litter, blend minerals as instructed
while the nuclear electric reactor drips clicks in oxygen tanks, its regulated tick
like a leaky apartment faucet. We miss Earth annoyances now: traffic jams and 
telemarketers and too-sweet iced tea as we wring water from the ice cap sip by sip, 
catch the liquid before it freezes back. The reclaimer flushes it, we drink again. We tilt
the mirrors, calculate, adjust, raise a greenhouse, huddle in blow-up tents for soybeans to bud.