Two women walked in space this week (without men) for the first time. This event was scheduled for last spring but had to be postponed when NASA discovered that they did not have two spacesuits the right size for both women.
Really?
For some reason, this detail of the space walk news story made me think of Cinderella. Yes, Cinderella.
Even as a child, I was curious about those glass slippers of hers because I knew that shoe stores where we shopped tended to have more than one pair of each size of each style of shoe. Didn’t anyone else in the whole kingdom wear the same size shoe as Cinderella? And besides that, how can a person walk in glass slippers without breaking them?
What does this have to do with this week’s space walking women? Perhaps nothing. But I am blogging every day in October, and the struggle to find daily content is real!
AND I try to write a news related poem each week to submit to Rattle.com. Rattle publishes one poem each Sunday that a poet has written in response to news stories from the previous week. This is my 69th submission and my 69th rejection.
No matter.
I still wonder about those glass slippers and how the story would have turned out if the lost slipper had fit someone else’s foot before the prince every made it to Cinderella’s house. Or what if Cinderella’s frantic flight from the ball as the clock chimed had shattered both slippers?
But Cinderella’s story is just a fairytale, and this 20th Blogtober blog is no place to unpack such philosophical “what ifs.”
In any case, I celebrate this week those space walking NASA women who heard the stars call their names—and who can now find spacesuits in their size.
Space Walking in Glass Slippers
Do you need glass slippers
for a space walk?
I’m asking for Cinderella,
the woman with the fabled foot
in that magical
once upon a time
from my childhood.
She was lucky, don’t you think,
since the prince only had
one size that didn’t fit all—
one size
that didn’t fit
anyone else but her
at the ball.
Yes, she was lucky,
wasn’t she?
unless she
tumbled
stumbled
down the stairs that night
slippers shattered,
dreams
unfettered
when she heard distant stars
calling out to her:
“May we have this dance?”
Salt 