The Song of Earth

Zarah Virtanen Windh

There’s a song on Earth that everybody knows.

From the first thump in our mother’s belly to the last breath on clean, white sheets, the song stays with us. It keeps us up at night, and it stays with us in the darkest times. Quiet. Ever persisting.

Taught through love, sex, and misunderstanding, the song lives on, generation after generation, spreading its wings wide across the globe. And when I left Earth to find a new song in the stars, for years we had already sent ours out in pulses, waiting, wishing, desperately hoping for the day we received different notes in return. Just a tick. A staccato. Perhaps an orchestra, deep, rich, and full of life. But we have yet to hear anything back.

When I left—full of hope and destined to fail—my mother hugged me goodbye. For a minute, we sang together, tears rolling down our reddened cheeks, and she put her hand on my chest.

“Remember,” she said and nothing else.

As my fellow crew members have slipped away from me, one by one, forever resting in their tight capsules after their songs reached their final note, I have persisted. Now, I am alone. There are days I sing so quietly that I cannot get out of this pod. But on days like this, I put my hand on my chest, and my heart knocks on my skin, vibrating through my hand, asking me for another day.

And I do remember.

I close my eyes and my Earth and my moon are stuck on my eyelids; the closest I will get to either of them again. I remember touching soil warmed by the sun, swimming in lakes carved by millennia of rain, and laughing with my childhood friends. One day, I hope that Earth’s pull drags my broken craft from space and depletes all of me from the wreckage, dust to dust, home again. But for now, I do the best I can.

I slip through the quietude, push dials, turn knobs, and suck on a package of artificial juice made from my own urine. Weightless, far from home, and singing to myself, but I know that light years from now, despite the rising waters, temperatures, and stakes, my family’s heartbeats align with mine. And perhaps, one day I will find life of another kind, a planet with an atmosphere like mine, something so that I can send a final call through the barrier of time.

But not tonight. Here, as another planet's moon rises, I smile. Tonight, I shall dream of all the things I cannot have and all the love I have in my bones, in my head, in my heart. Tomorrow, I shall rise again, new and old, alone and never alone. My heartbeat going strong.

For another night, I will sing. There’s a song on Earth, but right now, light years away, it also beats a quiet rhythm in me.

Quiet.

But persisting.