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Floating In Space

Written by Kritika Iyer | Edited by Audrvee Damiba | Design by Chike Asuzu & Emmy Ma

“Floating in Space” explores an unnamed narrators’ journey through space after abruptly escaping their home planet due to war and destruction. Through diary entries, readers witness the fear and uncertainty of leaving home and how our narrator copes with it all. It’s in these moments of reflection that we see the narrator break down their life and eventually find a home within themself. The story was inspired by various pieces from Echo that dealt with ideas of home and what home means to us.

DAY 34

Dear Diary,

We’re refugees with no destination. It’s been about 34 days since we left Andhar on an escapeship. We’ve just been floating in space.

Those of us on the ship talk about it rarely. The months leading up to the escape, the bombs and the bones. We do talk about the moon. We’ve never seen it in its entirety, only ever shadowed by the dark.

It felt freeing, at first, to have nowhere to go, to have no one. Now it feels daunting. For once I feel a twinge of regret.

DAY 59

Dear Diary,

I forgot the chorus of my favorite song. There’s no way to listen to music on this ship.

DAY 80

Dear Diary,

I feel like I can’t breathe. Maybe it’s the recycled air on this ship, maybe it’s in my head. Once on a road trip, my mom told me motion sickness was a mindset. I laughed and then threw up.

I saw her last night. It’s been a while since that happened. Those dreams sputtered out around age 15, and by 19 she was gone completely. She’s recently reappeared. I stopped one night and took the time to tell her everything I never could. That I still felt her in my blood. That she was every word I said and every tear I shed. She will always be me.

She left too soon, or maybe I did.

DAY 94

Dear Diary,

Sometimes I wish I had never left.

DAY 100

Dear Diary,

Our space radio doesn’t work so we’re unable to call anyone back home. Although sometimes we float by and I think of when we first saw the other side of the moon. It was then, most of all, that I owed some acknowledgement of our abrupt escape.

I look at Andhar brittled with destruction and all I see is myself.

I watch the days pass. Watch myself walk to the same coffee shop everyday and then to the library. Sometimes I check out the same books so I can reread my favorite passages. I watch myself walk to school, taking the same route every day.

It’s in these moments when my chest tightens and my head feels heavy that I owe some sort of acknowledgment to our departure and to these unremembered pleasures.

Since floating by home, I see the moon the way I once saw it before, in all its different shapes and shadows. I miss watching it go through each phase, constantly returning to what it once was.

DAY 114

Dear Diary, I tried praying to ground myself, but when I went to look up all I saw was myself in the mirrored ceilings of the spaceship. I tried to focus on my thoughts or saying a mantra but all I could think about was the scar on my forehead that I got as a kid when I tripped and fell down the stairs in our old house.

That was back when I used to run everywhere. I’d sprint across the house, panting and laughing. I don’t know why I was moving so fast like I had somewhere to go.

I was too eager to leave, never thinking of coming home. This whole time I’ve been missing home when really, home was with me all along.