On Venus It Snows

“Life is crazy,” Erik murmured to my left. I kept my eyes glued to the sky, fixed on a particularly bright star above my head, which I guessed was Venus. I sensed him in my peripheral vision, knew he had directed his gaze away from the heavens and waited expectantly.

Only when a gust of wind blew so strong I thought it might send me into a faceplant, did I tear my eyes away from the sky and glance towards him.

“Why?” I asked reluctantly.

The hulking figure paused as I awaited his trite response. I’d seen too much of him lately. Every day since getting home. And while I usually savored our conversations, relished what felt like being on the same emotional and intellectual frequency, it had gotten old. Maybe I was just all talked out. Maybe I knew him too well. Maybe I was just bored. My record seemed to reflect that- a long string of boyfriends whom I never kept longer than a month or two. He knew that. Not that he was my boyfriend or anything, but he’d wanted to be. Feelings like those never fully went away. His presence had become cloying, intimacy hanging like a heavy perfume in the air every time he was around me. It suffocated me. I was afraid he was waiting, biding his time. Hoping I’d change my mind. Like I had with Gabe.

He was looking back up at the moon as he made his reply. “Well, I’m here, standing on a rock in the middle of space. There’s so much out there. But I’m here. With you. Looking up at it all.”

I had re-directed my gaze upwards and now fought the urge to roll my eyes. I watched a pale gray cloud scud across the moon.

“And the stars we’re looking at right now, you know we’re looking at light from years ago? We’re not seeing them in the present. Imagine, if we were standing on a planet close to that star,” he pointed towards Venus and I bit my tongue to correct him, “we’d be looking at ourselves in the past. Or if we were standing up there and looking down at us now, we’d be seeing us, but in the future.”

“I wonder what my future self would see,” I pondered. “If it would see me in Ireland. Europe. Budapest, maybe.” He was quiet, so I continued. “I can’t see myself staying here all my life. Don’t get me wrong, I like it here. But the thought of staying here… it just doesn’t feel… right. Europe does.” I glanced over at him again but he made no move to comment. His mouth was set in a firm line. That was enough to satisfy me. I’d taken to speaking like this lately, of my future, happening somewhere far away. Away from him.

I laughed then. “But what you said would explain a lot. Like why I like to look up at the stars so much,” I clarified. And it hit me then, welling up and out of my core as though a drill had been set to it, and I fell back with a sharp intake of breath. I was on my back. My coat muffled the cold from the snowy ground, but I could feel it pressing in. And the air. So cold and clean it seared. Erik beside me, dropped to his knees, his breath coming in quick icy puffs that blew over my head, obscuring Venus like clouds over the moon.

The force of the realization pressed in on me. I gasped for air but it felt far away, like I was experiencing it from a different place, a different body.

My eyes, wide and unblinking, took in the billowing expanse above me. Images flashing against the sky as though screened from a projector. Gabe’s face. The ring. Five years he’d lingered. Forcing myself to fit into clothes from ten years ago, a child’s body. Erik bagging groceries at the store we’d worked at in high school. This very field. The same snowy plain another lifetime ago. When I was a bright spark and the world still lay at my feet.

I stood. I stood up and I ran.

Erik was hot on my heels, shouting my name, but his mass was no match for my speed. The wind was in our faces now and my eyes stung with tears as it whipped my exposed face. I stumbled a few times, my feet sinking into thick clumps of frosty grass that sank deceptively when stepped on. Desperation threw me forward. Erik had fallen behind; I couldn’t hear him anymore as I hurtled across the snowy plain, hearing only my breath and the wind and the crunch of snow and grass beneath my feet. I felt the slight rise of the earth and knew I was close to the crest. A few more steps and I was over it. I could see them, those blinding headlights that threw the field into harsh relief.

It had been unusual, another car parked in the gravel lot at 10 pm on a Tuesday night. Headlights on, its presence both confusing and irritating. Ruining the magic I’d been searching for in that glowing moonlit expanse. Another world. Now I ran towards those lights like I’d never run before. I covered the distance in what felt like a matter of seconds; only when I approached the black car and had my hand on the passenger-side door handle did I finally turn, just in time to see Erik come over the rise. I could see him there, silhouetted against the glowing snow. His hands were extended, reaching out to me. Beseeching. I blinked. And I opened the car door.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a white room. I squinted, adjusting to the light. Quiet steady beeps reached my ears, and the biting scent of ammonia flooded my nose. I shifted and felt a pulling sensation. Looking down, I could see a mess of wires attached at various points of my body; I followed them with my gaze to a machine a few feet away, the source of the beeping.

I waited for the man I hoped would come, who’d never left.