Here, I am a Woman
Lauren McBride
Society was obsessed with Mozart when I became obsessed with my husband’s telescope. The stars looked closer, as expected, but then some stars began to look familiar – as if I recognized them.
Someday people will discover planets circling stars, and life on those planets. I’m certain of it, because I remember tentacles and gills on a watery world, wriggling in caverns on a mossy moon, even floating formless in the gasses of a landless giant.
I say nothing. They’ll think I’m crazy.
But on nights alone at the telescope, I look towards my old homes until tears blur my vision.
This story won second place in the Great Lake Drabble Contest anthology, “Extra-Terrestrial Reincarnation,” Winter, 2019.
