June 2009

by Sharon Kae Reamer

The smell takes getting used to. It is the first thing that hits me as they shuttle us down in the spacelift, like being somewhere I don’t belong. Once that smell gets into your nose, you know it for sure. It reminds me of that stuff that comes out of ant bites when you squeeze them. Just magnified a gajillion times. That’s what they remind me of, too. Ants. A humanoid head, sure, but the parts look all joined up somehow. They all scurry around, purposeful, and the way they look at you, like they’re secretly signaling the Hive or some nasty shit like that.

I know I am going through that intense settling in phase that comes with a new place and especially a new species. Missing are black coffee and voices in a language I don’t have to think about. All my travels, and I never lose the urge to go outside and watch twin suns chase each other across a pink sand sky. Here there’s just some faint dinky red thing that never seems to set. Creepy.

This quiet really grates. I miss the kinds of sounds you only notice when they aren’t there. Except for the sounds I never want to hear again, the ones connected to memories of you.

Evenings near sunset, we’d sit out on the porch, watching the waters on the lake. I hear your tinkling laughter as the blackfish come up to the surface to warble at twilight. The sickness changed all that to a more permanent kind of twilight. After you’d gone, the universe spontaneously formed a grade three black hole out of my heart.

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