My Dearest,

NewEarth is the color of despair. I remember your dad’s postcards of the space station resorts and I thought everything would be bright cartoon. The walls are dingy, the floors dark with grease and neglect. I’m surrounded by other soldiers and I’m completely alone. I’m light years from Mars. But your arms are my home. I guess I don’t know what to write. I’ve never written a letter before. I accessed every file in my memory bank even remotely related to correspondence. The scratch of the pencil on actual paper is weird. How did people do this all the time? Never mind. I’m not being flippant but I don’t want to talk about the fight. I know I broke us. I know you won’t forgive me. I know you won’t even read this letter. But I also know you will keep this letter, you will keep all my letters. You may place them in a small box the color of your warm hands. You may place them in one of those tin cans the color of your childhood memories. You may shove my letters in the bottom of your underwear drawer tied with a ribbon the color of your lips. Feel my love when you hold this letter.

I know you don’t understand why I left to fight in this war. How I could risk what we had for freedom freedom for me and those like me how I could risk us. The truth is I can’t be without you and the boy. I can function but everything that makes me me is with you my love. The thought of you holding these letters my letter is the tether back to me, to us.

Tell the boy I love him. Tell him I miss him. Tell him I will be back because I never left and I never could leave. Let me come home one day.

—b