A Lonely Astronaut Responds to Fan Mail

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You couldn’t have fallen in love with me. I was on the moon, and you have never left Kansas. Did you know the moon dreamt of being its own planet? Earth wouldn’t let it go. But it didn’t want it back, either. Science will tell you differently, but science has never been in love.

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I dared to imagine another life for myself, and now it orbits me cruelly. My wife says I seem distant. That’s because I’ve been to the moon, I tell her. Things are irreconcilable between us.

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So stay in Kansas. Work at your diner. A man with brittle bones might come, and he might order steak and eggs, and he might leave a nice tip and a number. Don’t call him. Kansas is your oasis. You know what that makes Earth. You can trust me. I could see it was so from space.

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