The black abyss, it beckoned me. To fly a starship across the universe divide. It promised me things no human had ever beheld before. It lured me from the downy comfort of my life.

Pulled me from the love of my life and Earthly things I held close. I believed with divine certainty that the far off pin pricks held something for me.

I was wrong. 
It all went wrong.

Yet here I am. Alone and forsaken to wander this dark and desolate planet of origins unknown. I’m the sole ambassador to human life on this rock. 

With each encumbered step, I yearn for light. To find the fusion warmth of another star. I know it exists, for there’s life here, not unlike the life on our own planet. If only I had company, I could carry on, even with a sense of normalcy. So much of what lies in my view recalls a memory of my former life, each with their own calibrated stab of pain.

Then there was light. It fell at my feet at first and led me across to a world more like the one I knew and loved, and left. The golden cast came as if it was late. Rushing through the boulders and crags, setting me on a trajectory towards its origins. 

In the immediate distance, ice breaks off into the rivers below; floating past like flotsam on a river’s surface after a hard rain.

The rains are steady here. Not the hard driving kind like you find on a summer’s afternoon in Georgia where the road ends in water. More like what you could encounter in a valley deep in the Cascades at the top of a lake.

A persistent release of inconsequential droplets that as a whole provide a profound affect on the landscape for it is red here. All races of red. I hadn’t known the subtleties of the hue back home.

A week of rain and the world glitters with jewels of atmospheric perspiration. A kaleidoscope of tiny highlights and pin pricks of light that parallels the stars. The stars that promised so much and gave only a sentence of wandering in return.

I know eventually it’s all for not. I’ll consume the last of what keeps me alive—the atmospheric filters and the remainder of my nutrient. That’ll be the end to this cul-de-sac quest.

Only today I caught myself floating in a soup of thoughts, of sliding the safety and unlatching my visor and for a brief and final moment feeling the alien air hit my face.

I find comfort in this. One final outbound sentence into the black abyss.