The astronaut’s wife eats takeout from a cardboard box and watches the rocket, again, on the television. She thinks how they are always showing the takeoff, thinks how it looks like the rocket is getting smaller and smaller when, really, it is just getting farther away.
She won’t finish her takeout, set it on the kitchen counter, leave it for days.
The astronaut’s wife falls asleep with the television playing. She dreams of rockets.
At night, the astronaut’s wife picks up the telephone. The astronaut likes old-fashioned things, rotary dial. The astronaut’s wife listens to the quiet buzz of the empty phone. She thinks it must be the same sound the astronaut hears too, in space.
She thinks of the touch of the astronaut’s hand, the whisper of her breath. The astronaut’s wife says to the silence on the phone: I miss you. I love you. I miss you.
The astronaut’s wife watches the takeoff again and again, thinks of distance like this: if you stacked one hippopotamus on top of another, how many hippopotamuses would it take to reach the moon?
The astronaut would be able to tell her the distance between them in miles, in kilometers, in feet, inches. The astronaut’s wife thinks: how tall is a hippopotamus?
The astronaut’s wife keeps the television playing. When the astronaut is home, they never watch it. Curl up on opposite ends of the couch with books, toes touching. The astronaut twirls a piece of hair round her finger, inhales sharply at the good bits, calls them the good bits. The astronaut likes fantasy books with swords and magic. The astronaut’s wife pretends to read Tolstoy.
What do you think it will be like, in space? the astronaut’s wife says.
The astronaut lays her book spread-spine on the couch arm, considers.
Like sinking, she says. But never quite going under.
After a week, the astronaut’s wife throws the unfinished takeout away.
She tries not to inhale, carrying it to the outside garbage. She thinks how she is always breathing, how her body doesn’t need reminding to do it. She thinks how hard it is to hold your breath.
Outside, she looks up at the sky.
The astronaut’s wife knows that she is actually in space, too. Knows that the stars are always there, masked by blue sky. Knows that the sun is a star, that the stars are suns. That there are other planets like this one, and thus other astronauts and other waiting wives.
This small planet, she thinks, dropping the box of takeout into the garbage can. It makes a metallic sounds when it lands.
She reaches her hand up, imagines the height, the hide of a hippopotamus.
She reaches her hand up, thinks that, somehow, the astronaut is reaching her hand down.
Cathy Ulrich is the founding editor of Milk Candy Review, a journal of flash fiction. Her work has been published in various journals, including Black Warrior Review, Passages North, and Wigleaf and can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, Best Small Fictions 2019 and Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2017 and 2019. She is the author of the flash fiction collection Ghosts of You (Okay Donkey Press, 2019). She lives in Montana with her daughter and various small animals.