_The calendar indicates today.
_Memory fragmented.
_You are standing in a debris-cluttered junk bay.
_Most of this stuff is too heavy for one person to carry.
_Where Do You Want To Start?
_You hear the faint sound of machinery in operation.
_An escape pod rests in the middle of the room.
_It looks like your standard low-tech ascent/descent unit.
_LEAVE RADAR SYSTEM ON WHILE IN FLIGHT
_Your ship hovers between the garbage below and the ceiling above.
_Too late you realize that you have no course laid in.
_You are entering an interminably long hallway.
_Just another section in this maze of partitions.
_You are currently orbiting Ortega.
_You are currently orbiting Phleebhut.
_You are currently orbiting Pestulon.
_Keep it to yourself.
_Just move as you’ve been moving.
_Meanwhile… another spacecraft touches down elsewhere on the very same planet. ■
*this poem (about the extreme sense of stasis I suffered after my dad died) is made up of individual script and text files taken from Space Quest III, a game my dad spent a good deal of time playing on our family computer when I was young.
Erin Bedford is a poet and the founder of Pinhole Poetry digital journal and chapbook press. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, with stories and poetry appearing or forthcoming in EVENT magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Fiddlehead, Best Canadian Poetry 2025 (Biblioasis), Prism, and others. Her debut collection, one by means of two, will be published by Guernica Editions in 2027.
Image: “Overhead” by Alex J. Tunney
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