The Distance Between Us

Your sister says the winter  
Came too early this year

The river froze by morning  
The garden disappeared

She says your room is waiting  
Though no one goes inside

She says your father asks them  
Not to move the things you left behind

A government has fallen  
A coastline changed its name

A singer we both listened to  
Has died and risen into fame

The station sent a photograph  
Of children in the square

None of them were living  
When we first left Earth from there

Every word arrives alive

From a day already gone

Every voice is speaking now

From somewhere we cannot belong

Your mother says she's older  
Than she thought she'd ever be

She says she dreamed you entered  
Through the kitchen quietly

She knows the message takes too long  
She knows what that implies

Still she tells you what she's planted

As if spring were on our side

We answer people yesterday  
With words they won't receive

Until another version  
Of the world has learned to grieve

Home is still behind us

Home is still somewhere

But every message proves it

Home is happening without us

No gate without permission  
No law beyond consent

No voice above another  
No power heaven-sent

They laughed at our committees  
At everything we'd centralize

A million separate choices  
Underneath a million skies

The water plants were breaking  
The outer rings ran dry

Each district held its meeting  
While another garden died

No one trusted councils  
No one trusted those next door

Every answer needed freedom

Every hour needed more

Free to choose  
Free to wait  
Free to watch the hour grow late

We opened our reserves  
We sent engineers below

Mapped the failing networks  
Showed them where the pressure flowed

We saved twelve habitation rings  
Before the systems fell

For six bright days they praised us

And we believed it well

The faction that had worked with us  
Controlled the repaired supply

Their rivals called it foreign rule  
And swore they would not comply

A riot at the eastern locks  
A station split in two

We had come to save a city

And changed who held it too

Free to choose  
Free to fall

No value stays innocent  
When made the whole of all

If this reaches you  
We may already be gone

Do not turn for me

Do not come for one

The northern archives are moving  
The inland cities closed

We are sending what we can  
Before the outer network goes

I knew the shape beneath the static  
Before translation found the words

Years collapsed into a heartbeat

One remembered voice returned

We ask for help  
Because we must

Not because you owe us this

There are children in the memory halls  
Who have never seen your ship

Across the years  
Across the dark

Your voice arrived  
And found the part

Of me I'd left  
Beneath your sun

Distance ended

All at once

Whatever you decide

Remember us  
As more than what survives

I played it again

The mission has a route  
The mission has a cost

We cannot spend the future  
On a world that may be lost

Then what was all the language  
About meeting life beyond?

If the first who ever trusted us  
Can call and we move on?

The window still is open  
The reserves are within range

We can reach them if we alter  
The sequence and the plane

You said "within the margin"

You did not say how thin

Thin enough to matter

Not thin enough to end

Is this about a people?

Or one person left behind?

Does the answer change the dying?

If the motive is partly mine?

One by one  
Names entered

Yes

No

Abstain

Yes

No

Yes

The number held by one

The course display went dark

Then every star we travelled toward

Shifted across the glass

Turn the ship around

You stood beneath a different sky  
Than the one I carried home

Older in the way you watched me  
Stranger in the way I knew

I had rehearsed a thousand sentences  
Across the empty years

None survived the moment  
You were suddenly standing here

The distance between us  
Was never only space

I knew your voice  
I knew your hands

I did not know your face

Not the face that time had written  
Not the life I had not seen

I came back to find you

And found the years between

You asked about the mission  
Before you asked about me

There were names upon your shoulders  
There were people you could not leave

I wanted one remembered room  
One evening held intact

You had become responsible  
For everything around that past

The distance between us  
Was never only space

We kept the same old memory  
And changed around its shape

You said:  
"I loved the one who left here"

I said:  
"I came because I do"

You said:  
"Those are not the same thing"

I knew that much was true

Can love survive becoming  
If it cannot stay the same?

Can I meet you in the present  
Without using your old name?

The distance between us  
Is not a thing to close

It is the years we lived apart

And everything they chose

Still I stand beside you

Still you let me stay

Not where we left each other

Here

Today

They will stop at the river line

They will open three corridors

They will leave the southern cities

If we surrender the memory cores

No executions  
No occupation  
No burning of the names

Only access  
Only oversight

Only history rearranged

Take it

Take the terms

Living people can rebuild

No archive is worth children

No tradition worth the killed

You looked at me  
Not angry

Almost tired enough to smile

And said:  
"You still think survival  
Means continuing for a while"

If they decide what we remember  
They decide what we have been

If they enter every memory  
They enter everyone within

A body can remain alive  
After a people disappears

You asked me once what memory means

Now listen while it is here

The western vault is failing  
Move the children through the lower hall

Take the oldest records first  
Leave the ceremonial wall

Go

Do not wait

There is no time to argue now

I heard your voice above the system

Calm beneath the alarms

Not saying my name

Not asking me to come

You were speaking to your people

You were telling them where to run

And then the channel vanished

I had crossed the stars for you

And your final act  
Was not mine

Someone remembers you at seven

Running where the red grass grew

You hated storms  
You broke your arm

You lied about who pushed you

I never knew

Someone remembers your first public speech

How your hands would not stay still

How you forgot the opening line

Then made the whole room laugh

I never knew

Someone remembers you furious

Leaving dinner halfway through

Someone remembers three long months  
When they could not speak to you

I never knew

I carried one bright evening  
As if it made you whole

As if loving gave me access  
To the borders of your soul

Someone remembers kindness  
You never thought to tell

Someone remembers cowardice

Someone remembers you unwell

Someone loved a version  
Who had nothing to do with me

And every memory opened  
Another room I could not see

You were larger than my grieving

Larger than the time we shared

I had made a shrine from moments

And mistaken it for care

Give me the stories that disturb me

Give me the ones I would refuse

Give me every life you carried

Every self I never knew

Do not leave me only  
The person who loved me too

Let the dead remain enormous

Let me fail to finish you

We counted the empty bunks  
Before we counted fuel

Read the names twice

As if the second time  
Might change the rule

Some died in the corridors  
Some beneath another sun

Some because we turned around

Some would have died  
If we had not come

They boarded with their archives  
With children half asleep

With fragments of a language  
They were terrified to keep

They carried bowls and clothing  
Tools  
Seeds  
Names

The ordinary pieces  
That survive when worlds do not

I carried you differently now

Not alone

Not mine

Others spoke your childhood  
Into the dimming light

You brought us here

We had to come

You hid the risk

We knew enough

You wanted one person

We saved ten thousand

And lost our own

And lost our own

There was no verdict

No clean account

No scale that held the weight

Only people still alive  
Arguing about the dead

The ship left carrying  
More histories than it had rooms

Earth behind us

Ruins behind us

No original mission left to lose

We carry the dead forward

Not as answers

Not as proof

We carry what they changed in us

And what we cannot undo