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You’re far away from me again. On the opposite side of the sun.
I can’t even see you now.
There are things that I wish I could tell you, or better, let you see for yourself.
Everything is changing. I am teeming, I am quickened with life, with the bustle of strange little things, in my waters, on my shores.
I feel as if I am becoming someone new.
I know that you think that I have always been predictable. But I promise you: this is different.
And you? When I see you again, you will be the same.
And I will cherish you as I always have.
But what will you think of me, now that I have something new, something astonishing? Will you think it a pestilence or a gift? Or will you decide that such miniscule things, despite my excitement, mean nothing?
We will never join together; this is our fate, and we cannot change it. But later in the year, we will be close, close enough that I can feel the pull of you, the mass of you, like a scent through the darkness, like the sweetness of summer.
You have a summer, too, I know. And days so close to mine in length, when we spin near each other, it is like we are twins. It is like we are dancing.
I hope that you are happy to see me.
I hope that this hasn’t changed everything.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
It was a joy to see you.
But now we are apart again.
It seems like this is all we have. Distance and absence and the memory of almost-mingling. Color and light and words, brief words. Glisten, red, soft-hard motion. A spin that seems like a linger. The fearful symmetry of orbit, towards then away, towards then away.
It’s nothing new. Yet it feels new every time.
You were so mysterious when I asked you about life, when I asked you what you would make of inhabitants like mine. You tell me so little of your thoughts.
You will understand if it causes me to wonder.
I tell you everything of myself. There are times when I fear it, when I wonder if you can stand to see me, the horrors of me. The strangeness of my land, my seas. There are times when I think you will, at last, look away from me, leaving me alone, the fool planet, the planet without the sense to be like the rest.
But I tell you anyway. I don’t know how not to.
You, on the other hand. I am sure that you have secrets.
It makes we wonder if I am not the only one with something growing, with something scampering about.
Perhaps your own transformation is merely hidden. Perhaps below the surface, someday I will find more.
You probably think that I am being silly, that I am talking nonsense. And maybe I am.
It’s all right. You don’t have to answer.
You never do.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Some of the little ones have noticed you. They become agitated when you are near for some reason.
I think it is because of your red, your gorgeous, haunting seep of color. I know of nothing like it, and apparently neither do they.
I am not sure what to make of them. They are strange and small and occasionally very clever. But usually not.
They are also very … brief. Individually. The groups may last a little longer.
They spend much time destroying each other. For land and water and metals and other things. Yes, these things are mine. Of course they are. But it is not for me to choose. And even if I wanted to, how would I tell them apart?
But here is the interesting thing.
They think that you are the cause of war. Or if not war, then strife, and if not strife, then fire. They look at you and they think of a devouring flame.
What do you think of this? Are you the cause of their many distresses?
Are you the cause of mine?
They call you by different names – Nergal, Angaraka, Ares, and many others. These beings, many of them, like to divide the world into masculine and feminine, like to turn the cosmos into their bodies. Most of them imagine that you are a dangerous man.
I think they do so in order to make me a woman. Maybe they foolishly think that this is what it means to be a counterpart, to be two halves of a whole. They think, for some reason, that their sex organs are a perfect metaphor for opposites who are really the same.
I suspect they also think that if they wish hard enough, I will treat them like I am their mothers.
Whatever their reasons, they are fascinated by you. They count the days until your return and your egress.
I myself sometimes have doubts, I admit. But whatever my doubts, I will also wait. Far more eagerly than my little ones do, I await your return.
I wonder if you are awaiting mine.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
It has been a long time. But not too long, in the scheme of things I suppose.
These strange little things are quite enamored of their own inventions. They have even invented something to watch the skies.
They make up more stories about you than ever.
They see the harshness of your surfaces, the peaks left jagged from where they exploded long ago, a burst of molten rock onto an icy plain. They see the rivulets, long and narrow, sweeping across you, atop you. The smooth waves of your desert, the rhythm of soft mounds and valleys, constant and foreboding and graceful to a fault.
You light a fire in their minds. They see in you such potential, such extraordinary possibility of what is different, what is new.
I see you the same that I always have.
I still think you are beautiful.
I still don’t know what this beauty will bring us.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
I miss your wry comments at times. To many, they would come off as cold. But you’ve always been good at pointing out the ridiculous.
An example of the ridiculous: my clever little bugs are still set on destroying one another.
They’ve actually gotten much better at it.
They are also quite sure that you are more than what you seem. I wonder where they could have gotten that impression?
They think that you give shelter to their counterparts, that there are busy little bugs on you that will someday come to me. Supposedly, your beings will come angrily and with intent to plunder.
They tell stories all the time about these Martian invasions. Almost everyone tells this story, but the Martians change from place to place. In the United States, the Martians speak and act like Russians, in the Soviet states they sound and look like Americans. There are other variations, but almost always, you are the enemy.
They are all quite obsessed with you. But sometimes I wonder if it is really you they are obsessed with. Sometimes I wonder if their desire to know you, to know all the stars and planets, is wrapped up, tangled through, with all their other wants. We pull at their little minds for reasons that neither we nor they understand.
And sometimes I wonder the same about myself, about my motives and desires; do I want you because you are you? Or because we are each a symbol to the other, a mark or promise of something far beyond our system, beyond our sight?
Put another way: I have always wanted you. Does this mean I always will?
These are the things that I have been thinking about.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
My little ones are clever, just like I told you.
They know that you have water. I knew it too, though you would never admit it to me. The smell of it, the sharp freshness of it, is unmistakable.
They think that you once had life, of the tiniest kind. This kind, as we both apparently know, is the most likely to survive when it seems like everything else has frozen over. I suspect that you may some day surprise me with some little thing, something growing and changing, something hidden for a long time until, suddenly, it's not. Am I being ridiculous again?
Anyway, I am sorry for not telling you sooner about your visitor. The bugs built a toy and sent it to you. It scuttles about but it won’t do much damage. It’s only there to send images of you back to them.
Back to me.
Images of the sides of you that are hidden to me, and of the parts too small for me to see without their help.
Strange, the things that these excitable little creatures can do.
You must think that they would do anything to see you, that they are utterly desperate to know you, to sift and slide through every inch of you. You wouldn’t be wrong. Some of them cheered when they got to see you up close. Some of them look at the images many times a day, just to ponder how magnificent you are. How strange and beautiful and unyielding to their eyes.
But I have figured some things out about these bugs. They will always want more of me – my land, my water, my energy – and they will always want to take these things from others. Even when they are seeking beauty, even when they are seeking truth, they are also seeking these things. To the bugs, to know is to conquer; to discover is to invade; to adore is to possess.
I should have seen it sooner.
They first figured out how to travel so far – they figured out how to touch you, when even I have not – because they wanted to wage war from above my atmosphere. Then, they spun garbage and toys around me to help them talk to one another, to better control the resources, and the societies that help them control the resources.
Some of them even talk about visiting you some day. Setting their little bodies on you, pressing into spaces that I will never know.
I will not be euphemistic. I know that they have had fantasies, strange and destructive. They think that someday they will come to you and stay.
I am sorry.
They are fearful, as always. They think that I may be used up soon, that I will be sickly or feverish or simply won’t give them enough. They see you, so much like my twin, your dance so close to mine, and they want you. Right now they are glad to learn anything about you, but someday they think to have you for themselves.
Yes, they think you are lovely. Yes, they are fascinated, intrigued, entranced.
Yes, they look at you with wonder. But their wonder is never pure.
It is something that we may soon have to live with.
Do you think the same could be said of us? That our motives have not always been pure? In all the millennia of adoration, have we really been aiming to possess? To eke out some small victory against our fate, against our loneliness, against our own smallness in the dark?
How long have we longed for what we’ll never have?
What will happen to us?
Will anything ever happen? And if it does, will we be sorry?
I don’t know how you will respond. You will not say much, but I bet that I will be able to glean something from you. I think that, despite your many reservations, your longing has been no less than mine.
And as for the little ones, we will deal with that when we must. And besides, for now at least, they have given me visions of you that I have never had before. And so they can't be all bad.
Would you like to know their favorite picture from their toy? Do not be offended, but it is not an image of you at all. It is an image of me, from your perspective.
I hope that this doesn’t make me sound like a narcissist, but this is my favorite image too.
I have always wondered what I looked like through your distant eyes.
I didn’t realize how dark I was, how sharp the blue. I didn’t realize that from your vantage, I looked so exposed. Soft yet dense. Clouded yet gleaming.
It made me look at you differently, made me rethink our many memories. It made me question much of what I have assumed about your affections.
It somehow, after all this time together, surprised me.
So it seems that there are still things for us to learn about each other. Imagine that.
I will see you later this year, when we are close once again. When we feel, just for a moment, that we just might plunge into each other, enveloping each other until we’re one.
We will never do that, of course. We can’t.
But we will always be able to look forward to that one small moment when we feel, once again, like we might.