WE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE THE ASTRONAUT by daniel joseph
we didn’t even know we were in a rickshaw-type town, but it was a good thing we were, being out of time & money & the rickshaw seeming quicker than walking & like a pay-what-you-can type operation. we were already confused on so many levels – in a real uncertain bind, our heads bouncing along the ground behind us. we didn’t even notice the astronaut when we climbed aboard & about sat on him – as little as he was. but he said he didn’t mind the company, that he was just riding around for the ride of it & that is when he told us about being an astronaut & all. he looked more like a tree-topper to us. he didn’t have a suit on or boots or a patch or one of those hats they tend to wear, but he went right into telling us about being the only composer to ever see the sunrise from the outside of a spaceship on the other side of the moon – about how he had been sent to space on a singular mission to write a symphony about what it feels like up there, an opera about what it looks like up there, a fugue about what it is up there & that in a roundabout way was why he was here on this rickshaw; or, at least, that is what we think he might have said, the rickshaw being a bumpy, noisy ride & us not really hearing well to begin with & worrying about when we should jump off on account of us forgetting just where our stop was or if these things even had stops or what it was we truly owed.