They gathered at the edge of the burning sky,
their bodies neither flesh nor flame,
suspended in a moment between departure and arrival.
The air shimmered with unspoken grief,
each figure bore a spiral crown of memory,
pulsing with the echoes of their old world.
Mars wasn’t salvation; it was possibility.
A place where gravity hadn’t yet learned their names.
Together, they rose—not running from Earth, but from the weight of staying.
One by one, they spun into the sky, not quite fading, not fully formed,
tethered to each other by the thin threads of hope and sorrow.
In the chaos of color and motion, a new kind of silence bloomed—a unity found only in the act of letting go.
And so they went—not to escape, but to begin again.
JON.E.B.
