The Wishing Ship
I remember being very young and thinking wishful.
Silly things like, the sun was made of coins and the moon was made of crystals.
I remember tracing stars.
Letting my mind wander and roam on darker sides of passing asteroids.
Planning for disaster and wondering which comet we could really colonize. My friends and I.
There was really ever only room for us.
Spaceships aren’t made to fit more than five.
I remember Captain’s logs into a speak and spells. Charting maps for unknown reaches. Staring far into the wild beyond.
But I never had a telescope. If I did I would be cheating.
Saturn’s rings were cold in August so I never went far on my birthdays.
I never really go far. If I did, I would be cheating.
And there was this girl (there is always a girl), an interstellar sojourner who had a smile like stolen atmosphere. Breathless.
I offered her the galaxy. She told me it wasn’t mine to give. I said she was right, it had always belonged to her in the first place.
It wasn’t long before I drifted again, into even farther corners of the universe until I was shaking hands with Neptune and bumping heads with planet X.
Floating and floating and floating until,
I am hanging by a thread.
With the whites of pockets dangling and haphazard shoes hanging off my ankles;
and yet I felt peaceful.
Logic would prove my vital signs dire and my situation dismal.
I was marooned and outsmarted by wayward muses.
Logic would come to prove lots of things.
but what good is logic if logic isn’t wishful.
After all the sun is made of coins and the moon is made of crystals.
~Jason Nguyen
