Second Suicide

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I wonder, sometimes, if this is not me. Holding a tentacle up in front of the mirror, turning my eyestalk and studying these webbed ears, these bright green eyes with their space-black slits, I become convinced they belong to some other. It is a morning contemplation that, much like the gas from breakfast, eventually passes by mid-afternoon. But when I rise, I feel it is in another’s body. My brain is discombobulated from sleep, and I sense some deep gap between my soul and my form. I think on this while on the toilet, until my bunkmate, Kur, slaps the bathroom door with his tentacle.

“Always in a rush to shit,” I shout through the door, “but never in a hurry to be first from bed.”

Kur pauses in his protestations, possibly to consider this contradiction. “It is your smelly ass that wakes me,” he finally explains.

I flush and pop the door. Somewhere, our spaceship home will turn my waste into a meal. I like to pretend it will all go to Kur. Outside, we jostle in the tight confines of our bunkroom as he takes my place in the crapper.

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