Octavia E.Butler

The dead astronaut is going to be brought back to Earth. She wanted to be buried on Mars. She said that when she realized she was dying. She said Mars was the one thing she had wanted all her life, and now she would be part of it forever.

But the Secretary of Astronautics says no. He says her body might be a contaminant. Idiot.

Dad just looks at me and shakes his head. “You don’t understand,” he says. “You don’t have any idea what a criminal waste of time and money that so-called space program is.”

I need to write about what I believe. I need to begin to put together the scattered verses that I’ve been writing about God since I was twelve. Most of them aren’t much good. They say what I need to say, but they don’t say it very well. A few are the way they should be. They press on me, too, like the two deaths.