SPACE CADET
A Special Feature
Featuring
RUBY MARA, Author & Performer
&
Demetri Kamps-Stewart, Editor & Producer
One Day the Sun Will Explode and Leave Us in the Dark and Cold
100 trillion years ago,
the sun’s supernova swallowed Earth
in flames
and humans scattered
across the universe.
I was born on Ymar,
orbiting Algol,
the unluckiest star in the sky.
Ancient Earthlings referred to her as
The Gorgon of Perseus,
A monument to hero
conquering monster’s head.
The stake he claimed didn’t take,
snakes interlinked,
demon-star Medusa
winked occult warning
that all will turn to stone.
The universe,
once brilliantly bespeckled,
boasts little light left.
We’ve launched parties searching for the
swan song sun of
space
cadet reporting in.
Come in,
Proxima b.
Do you read?
Static.
The planet is abandoned.
Confirmed visual of Proxima Centauri
Thermal readings: low,
This data… it’s just as we feared,
It appears
it’s worse than we thought.
The dwarf is dimming, imminent demise.
I close my eyes, try to imagine life
Without her,
I am
isolated in the vacuum of space.
Not even as if in the middle of the ocean
with the waves bouncing my body,
wind slicing like a scythe,
moon beaming at me,
air to carry my screams.
No, nothing. It’s empty
preemptive of the
ennui of entropy
the ironically quiet, calm claim of chaos,
Far-off, I can feel her thinking:
Everyone is depending on me to be
How can I be that bright light everlasting
when I cant burn and feed?
When i cant breathe?
Alert: Oxygen low
Wires hopelessly crossed:
‘A statistical inevitability’
There is only one position where they
neatly
keep instances
to themselves, and infinitely many more
entanglement.
of
I cough up some flimsy flights of fancy I’d forgotten:
The sift of shifting sands at sunrise…
Nothing like brine to brighten the morning!
I would pour it through my hand
as if I were the hourglass
as if I had any say
how much
time might pass.
The sight of lightbugs emerging in
a
flicker at sunset.
I always wondered…
Is this
what the constellations had
looked like?
My star!
the demon-star Algol,
El Ghoul,
the winking eye of medusa
blinked,
a beacon nigh-eternal,
signaling the end of days and
we fled futilely
like flies flickering at dusk.
Space cadet signing off.
An alternate ending from the author, as performed above
All of a sudden,
It’s shining
So bright and warm,
Like my star.
Oh my star’s
Beaming
so bright
It hurts
but I can’t look away
From her
Immaculate radiance;
Beauty burning,
Imprinting her visage
On my retinas.
The rest blurs.
RUBY MARA writes and performs poetry casually as conversation, confusing her friends in Jacksonville, Florida. A writer for 3 years so far, she’s been featured & published locally. She also encourages everyone to join the fun as 1/2 the staff of an open mic.