One trapped astronaut on ISS called over to another
hovering above the boot of Italy.
He floated closer to the window, leaving space
for her to also see. “There, some fifteen years ago,
I took my kids to now what seems to be
a rhino’s eye—the rim of Mount Vesuvius.”
“Oh, my,” she thought to say, not afraid of silence
anymore. “A blackened eye, like coming from a fight.”
“And looking up at us as if aware of... everything.”
“Were they frightened,” she inquired, “to be so close
to possible extinction? Not the rhino, I mean—”
“No, I gathered that. How could they imagine
what we’re seeing now? The hike itself was tiring,
so fear had not the proper energy to brew.
In retrospect..., the chances of eruption there
are higher than a lightning strike—”
“for any fool who’d run in rain. Of course, not you!”
He blushed at not being deemed a fool, while
she gave distance for the lull. “You’d think,” he thought
to say, a bit afraid of silence in these floats,
“we’d shutter at the prospect.”
She wondered whether to push on, “of extinction?”
“Of... everything,” swallowing the pride of astronaut
aplomb. “I mean, we’re scientists up here in danger of
the knowledge of our ends. Our collective end,
starting with Pompei and furthering—”
“to white rhinoceri with blackened eyes.”
Now her turn to blush: “but maybe not to us...”
hovering above it all—neither wanted to express.
Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2024)
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