burn
prograde, full throttle. it's been long enough hiding curled up in a safe orbit, long enough drowning in a two-inch puddle of bitterness, long enough feeling hatred about myself to do anything about it―
so i burn. i train the models and route the traces and wire the electronics and draft the papers and build the simulations and take the interviews and run the algorithms and practice the string crossings and even as the Breakerspace double espressos give out and the February wind rams down the throat of the Outfinite Corridor under a star-strangled sky there’s a twisted relief that finally, i’m doing something―and maybe, finally, at last, this time, it’ll be enough―
i know i can’t keep this up. i know the fuel is low. i know that i can count the delta-v budget in pennies, that darkened swamps are growing out of my eyes, that i’m a double inverted pendulum with a broken LQR controller―
but if this is what i need to dig myself out of this gravity well, so be it:
against the current, i will run faster, spread out my arms farther―
dancing at the edge i burn
and perhaps i will
feel at last
alive