I wrote this after reading a script submitted for a writing competition I was judging. One of the stage directions kept floating around in my head and I started thinking about the creative and beautiful potential for them as a form of writing.

Stage Direction

Laika watches the moon
Secretly, silently
Hating it.

Laika watches the moon
Recalling the afternoon her mother told her the story of her name
(it was the day before her ninth birthday)
And how she sobbed noisily thinking of the unbearable loneliness
Endured by her canine namesake.

Laika watches the moon.
Studies it.
Observing, measuring, calculating.
Every result carefully recorded in her sage green, wide-ruled exercise book
Filled with precise graphs drawn with a pencil and a ruler.

Laika watches the moon.
She stands on a wooden porch at the back of her house and leans against a post.
She is smoking a cigarette, and lazily blows smoke rings as she waits.

Laika stares at the full white moon.
She puts her hand over her left eye and slightly turns her head.
She blinks slowly.
The moon blinks back.

Blackout