Hour Glass

The customs dudes laughed at me when they found the hour glass in my luggage. After all, what good is a gravity-centric device on a zero-g spaceship?

I ignored them. My husband gave me the heirloom and there was no way I was going to leave it behind. It looks ridiculous bungeed to my cot. The sands are floating around in it, and the occasional one bumps another through the hole, but for the most part they all hang out in their own half. So I'm living the same hour perpetually.

Funny. Since when Rick gave it to me, he said he was, "buying me some time." Well it worked, honey. Now I've got all the time in the galaxy.

I bought this ticket to free me from my past. From cancer, pollution, and everything that has made Earth a pit of a place to live. I thought the change would be liberating. Yet every night, I stare at my hour glass and I miss it all. I miss my husband. I miss his grave; the last physical attachment I had to him. I miss gravity. I miss the feeling of solid ground beneath my toes and a big, open, blue sky. I miss sushi at Makka's and I miss the sound of crickets.

Crickets always reminded me that the ecosystem hadn't completely collapsed. Someone told me once that they're bringers of luck. I haven't felt lucky of late. Maybe I should've tried to catch one of the little critters and brought it along.

The customs dudes would never have allowed it aboard.