One of my poems has been published in the third-quarter 2011 Star*Line: Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. It’s “Outward Voyage,” another of my snapshot poems; this one is a brief moment of awareness, “lostness,” on the first generation ship to flee the devastation of Terra. In my mind, it pairs with “Endings,” which was published in the July/August 2009 issue of Star*Line.

“Outward Voyage”
by Elizabeth W. Bennefeld

Is he downstairs, again,
fallen asleep in his chair?
Or did we bury him years ago
under Terra’s summer sun,
and I’ve forgotten once more
during the long, cold night?

I’ve actually been dreaming about this “world” for many decades, but from a different perspective: growing up in weightlessness, out in space, and then living in an improvised shelter on a stairway landing, the stairs and walkways clinging for the most part to the sides of a gigantic sphere whose lights switch on a regular cycle from full daylight to soft, dim lighting and back. Within the past 10 year, I believe, I read a book that described a similar environment, although it was just part of a permanent settlement; I do not recall the name of the book or of the boy who ended up there by mistake. (I’m thinking that perhaps the author’s first name was Robert and that perhaps he wrote a number of YA SF books.) It is startling when I see a place that I’ve been in, described by an author in a book I’m reading for the first time. As though the places of my dreams do have an independent existence.