'Lift Off' by Cherry Potts

Not the blast and roar of Cape Canaveral, but a gentle uncoupling, a pushing away, a metallic hush – it reminds her of the swimming pool when she was seven, hooking her feet under the bar and stretching back into the water, tensing muscles, then relaxing as the water holds her. Her hearing dips, echoes and blurs. Her body remembers bending knees, remembers pushing away, the water caressing as her hands stretch up and back and make contact – not with the choppy surface of the municipal pool, but the overhead switches.

So, yes, just the gentle pushing away into the intimacy of space. Listening with all her heart to that soft hushing whoom – the hum and tick of machinery about her, and Earth drifting beneath/above/beyond the reach of her stretching fingers, beyond the reach of her hearing, baffled as it is by the many voices serving up data, dreams, good wishes – gradually fading as she drifts out of reach of those static-filled whispers, into radio silence, and a greater silence still. Her fingers uncurl and she floats, weightless, the scent of chlorine in her nose, and the slap of water still ringing in her ears.