by Sabina Y. Wong

Come with me, and I’ll take you places, she whispered after another magical evening. The announcement would come out in the paper a week after the man hitched a line to the end of her tail and they were long gone from the night sky: Man Marries Comet. Hurtling through space was exhilarating. One moment Earth was beside them, and before he knew it, they were in distant reaches he’d only seen in pictures. Each year they approached his former planet, and his heart swelled with pride imagining all the discussion surrounding them as the trailblazers making history with their union.

On their tenth anniversary, however, he found he could no longer muster the same level of excitement. Why were they always so eager to see her? he thought, watching the crowds gather to see the meteor shower left in her wake. There are other comets, but there are no other men married to one. I’m the first. When they returned, he needed to take matters into his own hands to share the glory once again.

His wife’s trajectory wobbled, and she turned with alarm to watch her husband inch his way along the cord. Stop! she cried. But he kept climbing. She probably warned him off because she wanted all the acclaim for herself. He smiled when they dipped closer to Earth because it would provide the best opportunity for people to see him in detail, so he scrambled closer to his wife who kept urging him to return to his original position.

Together, they skimmed Earth’s atmosphere. Combined with their speed, the heat created stung his knee. He yelped, and tried to shimmy back down, but by then it was too late—the high temperature fused his skin to the rope. His cries were drowned out by the oohs and aahs of the people watching the comet transform into a shooting star—the first to have done so—resulting in scientists writing about the event for years to come. In a blaze of white hot fire, they crashed into the Earth, where enthusiasts caravanned out to comb the area. They found her, just a tiny thing in the desert, reduced down to a tenth of her size, but no less grand. They wrapped her in linens to transport her to a museum, where throngs of people would flock to see her, while the man’s ashes scattered in the sand.