THE WATER ON MARS VANISHED THIS MIGHT BE WHERE IT WENT
by T. Liem
Water molecules, pummeled by particles of solar wind, broke apart into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and those, especially the lighter hydrogen atoms, sped out of the atmosphere, lost to outer space.
– Kenneth Chang, NYT, 19 March 2021
Darkness held water or water went dark or ceased to be itself, resting transformed in darkness. Water was trapped and lost. Water in the details of the red rock clay. Water in the phrase quite a long time. Quite a long time three billion years a long time. Water left slow and low. Hydrogen atoms outlived an ocean. We outlive days on days. Water in the calculations. Water in the estimates. Water in the best guess. We promise to be good guests. We drool three billion years down our chins. We are not beyond business. Water in the business plan. Can you imagine being so well resourced that your best idea is to detonate nuclear bombs on Mars to warm it up. The idea is that this would return water to itself, to us. How many have obliterated a body because they deemed it too cold for them to conquer. They know where the water went. It was the body response though rhetorical questions do not ask for such things.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
T. Liem is the author of Slows: Twice (Coach House 2023), and Obits. (Coach House, 2018), which was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award as well as the A.M. Klein Prize. Their writing has been published in Apogee, Plenitude, The Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. They are from Alberta and live in Montreal, Tio’Tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.
Creator photo by Surah Field-Green.