and you were born with a battlecry on your lips,

making a sound when your lungs weren't fully formed;

you were born in the ravages of space, in swirling stardust and

the heat of a thousand bombs just outside the edge of your sight. the universe in its constant dance of life and death,

but for the woman who held you in her arms, it had just ended.


4% of babies born in space don't survive. none have ever been born like you.

in a shuttle, exposed to radiation, stressed by trauma, and a bit too early, but you kept coming back from the edge again and again.

and they called you fighter and said,

maybe this one will live.


space can change you, change you, change you,

space can break you.

(it doesn't.)


most kids don't walk till they crawl;

you hit the ground running and found it too slow.

and you don't know why you learned to cry in silence, but you did.


you leap and leap and try to fly, because maybe you'll find yourself in the middle of a fall,

if you can just get high enough—


you grow.


it's there still, that restless urge to run (to leap, to fly)

in a world too small too small too slow,

and you jump so fast you hit the edge of space, you almost make it,

but you fall.

(you always fall, it's what you are)

it haunts you still, at night.


you grow

and you are in love with nothing less

than the breathless absence of air in the first millisecond of a supernova,

and the shattering heat of a newborn star.

you stretch your fingers reaching up, always up,

screaming I EXIST I EXIST I EXIST


and you throw yourself at death, but never laugh in its face,

you spend your life trying to prove them wrong,

because living can never be enough;

(this debt you owe, you have to pay,

you have to fly, you have to fall)


you are so tired of burning.


- Who am I, Captain Pike?

- Your father's son.

No. You are more.


and you will be more beautiful than Icarus, and more holy than the stars;

you will remake yourself

in the image of the sun;


you are destined for something greater.