There was a time I thought my life was all it’d ever be. Attended by many careful hands and kept in a sterile room, I was loved, monitored, nurtured and protected.
So it was quite a shock when they put me on top of a massive rocket and fired it into space. I drifted for a million miles before bouncing to an unceremonious stop on this remote world.
Now I wheel slowly onwards, tilting my dusty face to a bronze sky, a distant peak, to peer at the rocks. I see no one else and never will. I take selfies.
JAMES WISE has been writing most of his life, with poems published in local Oxford anthologies Hidden Treasures and Island City, alongside Tom Paulin and Paul Muldoon. With an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck, James has had short stories featured in MIROnline and Issue 14 of The Mechanics’ Institute Review.
Image: Skeeze via Pixabay
The Cabinet of Heed 