It wasn’t your fault
It wasn’t your choice
Heat and fear and suffocating metal
The universe’s reward for being kind
Your first breath, in some alley somewhere
Your last, in the darkest pit science could throw you
Were you happy? Did you trust them?
Even if you had known, would it have mattered?
The public looked on for weeks, pointing you out in the sky
Was it enough, their excitement? Did it keep your ghost alive?
It is not their fault they pointed, they thought it was still you up there
It is not your fault it wasn’t, I’m sure you would have stayed if you could have
But first, gravity releases its hold on you
102
You play
For the first time, you get to play
You are weightless, and you are free, and you are Laika
And then the heat,
And then the door stays ever-closed
They watch from a room millions of miles away as your heart rate speeds up
They will not come to get you
240
They were never going to get you
0
For five months you were a shape
In a spinning metal can, and that was progress
For ten days you were something to look for in the sky
For five hours you were a cosmonaut
And then five months later your tomb plummeted into the ocean
And the atmosphere clawed you to shreds
And the Earth that had borne you would not let you home
You did not get flowers, you did not get a bed
Ash and ice and floating in one dark, starless cosmos
I hope the stars welcomed you back, once your body had gone
I hope that they were kind to you
It is not your fault
It is not your choice
There is stardust in your veins
I hope they string you up a constellation