By Sarah R. New

Laika, how did it feel on that tantalizingly long ascent to the stars? Were you bright eyed, bushy tailed, electricity collecting in your fur and sparking with excitement? Did you think about the places you’d go, the things you’d see, how important and respected and loved you would become? Were you excited for the adventures to come, the long road ahead, the glass ceilings you’d shatter as you leapt to touch the unknown?

Laika, did it hurt to find out why you were chosen? To find out they had fallen in love with another dog, which led you to your fatal flight? Did you ever wonder what would have happened if you were the cuter one, the more lovable one, the one who had become a mother to the fragile puppies who couldn’t yet be separated? Would you have been saved as well?

Laika, is this what you would have wanted? When the scientist took you home, to play with his children, did you think you would stay there? Did you hope that? Did you realize what was happening, the next day when he put you back in the car? Did you think you were home, only for all your hopes and dreams to be ripped apart, unable to ever be fixed?

Laika, did it hurt you to hear of Félicette? Did you feel relief to hear that they had done that awful act to another girl too? Or did you just feel sadness, grief, relief? Did you dream of flying together betwixt the stars? Did you resent her, for being allowed to return to Earth? For not dying alone, scared, overheating, in a tiny metal box spinning miles above the horizon? For being allowed to come home? Or did you feel like she had been tricked, to triumphantly return but then to be used in experiments, scrapped for parts? Did you realize you’d both been used?

Laika, cosmonaut, do you know that we mourn you? Do you know that we tell tales of the brave girl who was let down by so many? Are you glad that you remain in the sky, flying and free, able to travel and explore forever, with no one left to hurt you? Are you aware that you’ve passed into myth and constellation, inspiring us to venture to the stars? Do you play in the stars forever? 

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Sarah R. New (she/her) has recently been published in journals including Wishbone Words, Gastropoda, and in Broken Olive Branches, a Palestinian charity anthology. Her Gothic horror novella, Amissis Liberis, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May 2024. Her travel memoir, The Great European Escape is available for free from https://sarahrnew.wordpress.com/.