I am naked.  Naked and floating above the Earth, the grip of gravity can’t contain me.  The space station is cold.  It’s metallic.  I look through the window at the planet below, the blue hue of atmosphere glances around the quiet cabin.  Sounds are amplified by the silence.  I can hear the faint hiss of oxygen through the vents, the background beeps of the instrument panels.  The silence around each sound is nearly absurd.  

I dangle.  Naked.  I am alone and the frigid cabin is like a cell.  It is claustrophobic.  The counterbalance of claustrophobia in the midst of planetary freedom is an odd feeling.  The vastness beyond feels uncontrollable, the claustrophobia gives me a sense of weird safety, like a baby in swaddling cloths.  So I got naked.  I got naked to feel that rush of uncontrollable freedom.  Naked in space.  No one would ever know.

Only a group of us have ever been inside this freedom, outside our planetary prison.  I will go back and gravity will pin me against the planet’s surface.  I will be trapped inside the closed ecosystem of a giant terrarium.  I will breathe in the carbon dioxide of someone else’s breath.  The pressure of atmosphere will constrict me.  Nothing can be more claustrophobic than that.  But right now, I am loose.  I am not a member of that hot and sweaty prison.  I am naked and cold and utterly alone.

I desperately long to go back.