I bathe in plumes of thermal water laced with salt and ethane, and it burns my breasts and I secretly crave the decay.

Mission log 1001- POST BURIAL REPORT 

By Meheru Alaspure

Mission log 1001: POST BURIAL REPORT 

Subject: Burial attempt 01 

Coordinates: 68.4 °N, 225 °W (Baghdad Sulcus) 

Can you see the stars and the way they ballet against the black pool of the sky?  

I told them about you. 

I dug a graveyard of your name on Enceladus. The ice cracked under my pounding blood fist. Crimson. Gore against the taupe of the airless sky. Necrosis infiltrated my nails, liquefactive, and I thought the frostbite looked like an ascaris tapeworm. I knew it was ammonia. I knew it was you. The pungency was malodorous. I loved it; the way it stung my nasal mucous membranes and reminded me of your breath. I think I am insane and I think I don't care.

I bathe in plumes of thermal water laced with salt and ethane, and it burns my breasts and I secretly crave the decay. I am Pandora, that adorns Saturn's ring. I think they will find you, a molecule in a frost plume, in a spectrograph, a biosignature of life. But you will be dead, won't you? And no one will remember the two kissing teenagers who drink starlight. I will search for your scent in cryovolcanoes, in carbon, in E-rings. I will engrave our names on Cassini, a proof of life. Or rot. Saturn is the god who forgets how many children he killed.

I left love in a liquid ocean, 102 kilometers beneath a crust of irradiated ice. I left a cassette of us singing in Greek against the luminescent rings on Saturnalia.

From Scheherazade 

I spun stories from the stars 

Lest I became one 

[Signal lost] 

About the Author...

Meheru Alaspure is a junior studying in Pune, India. Her passions include astrobiology, neurochemistry, capsicum pizzas and Russian songs. Her work has appeared in Daphne Review, Incandescent Review, Scribere, Stirling Review, Alcott Youth Review, and more. She has also been commended by the John Locke Institute and has received an honourable mention in  the Bowseat Ocean Awareness Competition. She serves as a researcher at the Astrastem Journal and runs an astronomy newsletter called Via Lacteum.

About the Artist...

Sophia Waller is a 12th grade Visual Artist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Her ideal mediums are painting, printmaking, and drawing (either with charcoal or colored pencil).