The Earth Always Rises In The East

I always thought sunrises would look different on Mars. I expected a spectacle I’d never seen before, but instead I got an ’80s dystopian Hollywood movie. There is no colorful light show, just a bland evaporation and shades of endless ochre. The Ochre Planet, they should have called it. But I guess things look different from afar, just like the Earth, hanging carelessly in the distance, as if it wasn’t actually rotting away, slowly, but surely. Light takes 182 seconds to reach us, so if home would go away forever, we wouldn’t know for three minutes and a heartbeat. A few of us have fled the doom, thinking we could cheat our destinies, but time is merciless and drags us all into the abyss that feeds on our greed. We haven’t escaped, we just extended the leash. It’s ironic, we look for hope on this barren planet that bears the name of the god on the altar of which we have sacrificed our home. But in spite of all this, when I think about tomorrow in the hazy twilight of the martian dawn, the Earth always rises in the East.