A Space Odyssey

To those who say "Nothing hurts more than cutting ties with your lover",

Clearly, you haven't dipped a cookie inside a glass of milk, and watch it break in half, as it solemnly sinks to the bottom.

You haven't had your socks drench and turn moist as you accidentally step on a puddle.

OR, you haven't seen your friend transition

From someone who was the center of your universe,

To someone who is now building a solar system of her own; where you, good sir, are not even the asteroid.

You're more like a comet- the trajectory is so elongated, you won't cross paths more than once in your lifetimes.

.

He fired up his spaceship, made a beeline for Mercury

But the situation was too hot to handle.

So he travelled to Venus, where it literally rains metal.

Its upper atmosphere does have oxygen, enough for humans to breathe.

But his ship couldn't endure the shrapnel of misunderstanding and hurt that poured beneath it; he just watched and gritted his teeth.

.

Mars was phenomenal!

There were no aliens, but he wasn't alone.

He was surrounded by clones replicating his own memories with her

In the form of every text, every call, every fight that left him vexed,

All the times he tried to set things right but didn't know what to do next

The thought of what should not have happened made him quiver

As he cried himself a river,

And I don't know if water existed on the planet before that point

But even if it did

It is proof that even miracles can disappear without giving birth to anything worthwhile.

.

Thanks to its gravitational pull, Jupiter keeps thousands of meteorites away from Earth's proximity.

Maybe it doesn't realize- not everything that weighs you down is yours to carry.

Regardless, our spaceman couldn't ignore its magnanimity.

If she was Jupiter, he thought he was Europa.

She has 78 other moons, but he's the most popular.

Although nothing lasts forever, all things must take flight.

Even your shadow abandons you in the absence of light.

From contacting each other every day, to being just another contact in their phones,

Life had come a full circle, they were now on their own.

.

He traveled to every other celestial body to find her, and make amends.

But she was light-years ahead. He'd reached a dead end.

And then he stumbled upon Pluto- so small and distant, it's not even considered a planet.

But nothing else represents the gamut of humanity's sins so accurately.

Recent images reveal that it has a giant frozen lake, covered with poisonous ice, in the shape of-you guessed it- a heart!

For some, this may sound too edgy. For others, this may be profound.

For him, it was a sign to go home, to turn his vessel around.

.

When people change, we only have two options

To either resist it and suppress those feelings inside with frozen nitrogen,

Or to fire up the engines again, and let go of the burden.

He activated warp speed, covered a distance of a billion kilometers in a few minutes.

But down on Earth, 75 years had already passed. Everyone he knew was gone.

And yet, on the outset, nothing seemed to have changed.

It was the same blue planet. Drifting.

Floating weightless. Calling home.

He learnt his lesson.

Attachments can be brutal, especially the ones that lead to silent expectations.

Always live in the moment. Because it might be the only one you would have with that person.