Orbital

by Samantha Harvey

From the space station’s distance mankind is a creature that comes out only at night. Mankind is the light of cities and the illuminated filament of roads. By day, it’s gone. It hides in plain

sight.

Up here, nice feels such an alien word. It’s brutal, inhuman, overwhelming, lonely, extraordinary and magnificent. There isn’t one single thing that is nice.

An astronaut and a fisherman. What a collision of worlds.

Correspondingly on the US toilet door, AMERICAN, EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE ATRONAUTS ONLY. Because of ongoing political disputes please use your own national toilet.

This thing that is, given the poor choice of alternatives, so unmistakably home.

Earth

When they look at the planet it’s hard to see a place for or trace of the small and babbling pantomime of politics on the newsfeed, and it’s as though that pantomime is an insult to the august stage on which it all happens,

And when you do look out any claustrophobia becomes agoraphobia in an instant, or you have both at once.