Spacewalk by Katie Munnik

You wanted to marry and that was a step, wasn’t it, my love? 1969, love everywhere but you said you wanted only me and would I? And I did. Just after the moon launch when everything was song and prophecy and beating the Russians, I took my own small steps down the aisle, my own leap of faith.  

Then you wanted that shiny job, a foot on the ladder, a car in the driveway, a key in the lock. So we drove five days out to the coast, stepping away from everything we knew.

I wanted a baby, then another. We walked through those short years quickly, one foot in front of another, two steps at a time.

A promotion. A holiday in France. The mortgage paid. A tiredness you didn’t talk about. A test, another. Your face pale like the moon.

Now I stand at the shore watching the pulled and ebbing tide, wondering how we are here already. Here at the end where the water will only slide away, your hand slip from mine, leaving me with nothing but damned tranquillity.