Machines

if I never learned the earth was spinning;

that there was no bottom and there was no top;

that light from stars I could see left years before I could see the light;

that so many stars could now be gone;

that the sun, one day, as well, would be;

that this wasn’t the kind of thing to overthink;

and if I never learned to overthink;

if I could switch thoughts off before they started to spin;

take that first celebrity suicide;

I mean the first one in our lives;

he wrote a note then shot himself;

we weren’t supposed to hear this;

they were whispering so we wouldn’t;

it was our mother and a neighbor from down the street;

we called her aunt, but she wasn’t our aunt;

she was these kids’ mother, and we hated her kids;

we hated her more;

she made our mother act so dumb;

she made her drink too much;

they were drinking, this day, a bottle of orange liqueur;

the bottom of the bottle was shaped like an orange;

it was our fake aunt’s bottle she brought over;

it was too early to be drinking liqueur;

our fake aunt was often drunk in the day;

she was divorced, and divorce, back then, meant something;

it meant fucked-up kids and it meant your reputation;

it meant our fake aunt fell down, drunk, on her way home from our house;

but that was a different day;

that day, she fell over the hose the help had left in a bunch on the lawn;

we heard her scream, and it could have been from anything, a scream like that;

my brother and I ran outside to see;

our fake aunt was facedown in the grass;

we didn’t want to touch her, so we waited for her to get to her knees, figure it out;

our mother didn’t drink in the day unless our fake aunt was at our house;

our mother was weak around other women, and we’d always known she was weak;

now here she was, pretending not to be drunk, pretending an interest in us we knew was just pretend;

then, Pow, our fake aunt said and stood and shaped her hand like a gun at her head;

What, we said;

our mother said, Nothing;

to our fake aunt, she said, The kids;

our mother never once thought before she spoke;

she always ruined it all;

my brother said, Why the gun;

Tell me, he said;

I said, Tell me;

there was no reason to keep a secret from us;

we knew too much already;

there were bigger things than the things they kept a secret;

like all of space, for instance;

like all I knew about space;

like how spaceships floated in a free fall;

how astronauts floated within them;

how weightlessness wasn’t like floating in water;

it wasn’t a calming thing;

how a single force could push you out of orbit;

it could send you to the darkest place;

because you’ve never had control;

you’ve always had to pretend it;

now here we all were, in a kitchen, pretending;

here we all were, as if nothing;

we were about to leave for a party;

it was a bowling party for some kid we didn’t like;

the bowling alley was on the other side;

our father drove us and told us, Be good;

I wasn’t sure if he meant be good at bowling;

or if he meant be good in some other way;

there were holy ways we were never taught, but heard about;

certain kids who knew this stuff, kids we would never be;

they were kids our mother always called good;

but we preferred the asshole kids we hated;

this party was full of assholes;

my brother bowled, but I sat at the counter;

I liked the pizza the bowling alley had;

I liked the local guys who served the pizza, because they also served me beer;

this was because of how I looked;

I didn’t care what the reason was;

I was learning to work with what I had;

so I sat there, feeling old;

I drank beer from a cup meant for soda;

there was music I liked coming from the walls;

and the sounds of all those crashing pins;

like the sound of gravity, I thought, then thought it seemed insane;

like how a crush makes you think, or just drinking does;

but I didn’t care then there were things in space that couldn’t move out of our way;

I didn’t care then what asteroid struck us, what black hole sucked us closer to its edge;

pretty soon, the other kids were at the counter;

they were talking the shit kids always talked;

all of them going on and on;

that first celebrity suicide;

they said he’d shot himself in the head;

they said it happened in a kitchen;

so then I was seeing our kitchen table;

then I was seeing our mother and the bottle shaped like an orange;

then I was seeing our dumb fake aunt, her hand like a gun at her head;

like she was better than him, which she was not;

like she was better than anyone, but she was the absolute worst;

there was a night she came by our house with a dog;

we were eating dinner, and she walked in like she lived there;

she held up the dog with one hand and said, Does anyone want a dog;

my brother and I said, We do;

we said, We want that dog;

but our mother said no to getting the dog;

she said no way were we getting a dog when we couldn’t even help around the house;

we looked at each other like what did that even mean;

none of us ever helped around the house;

we had help to help around the house;

our mother was just pretending again;

but our fake aunt was better at this;

this dog was the runt of its litter, she said, and it was the only one that wasn’t brown;

this dog was gray, she said, and it was the only one with longer hair;

her kid, she whispered behind her hand, had kicked it across a room;

because his parents were divorced is what we thought, and now he was all fucked up;

divorce meant that, and it meant our fake aunt was all dressed up for going out;

there was a way one dressed for going out;

there was a way one smelled, so obvious, so desperate;

our mother said, I said no;

but our father was petting the dog now;

he had one arm around our fake aunt’s waist;

he made sounds into the dog’s fur;

don’t turn this into a thing;

our fake aunt wasn’t the one;

we hated her, but she wasn’t the one we hated the absolute most;

and whether or not we got to keep the dog;

it doesn’t matter the outcome of that day;

that scene in our kitchen doesn’t matter;

or any scene in our kitchen;

or in any kitchen, or in any room;

as if rooms could even protect us;

as if the sun would never collapse;

and we would just go on forever;

obeying some law of inertia;

a ball rolling straight down the lane;

no force coming in to stop it;

there was such dumb hope in those laws;

such bullshit in those laws;

because the ball would eventually hit the pins;

it would send them wild across the floor;

the pins would eventually hit the walls;

a kid would press a small white button;

a machine would sweep the pins away;

a machine would reset the pins;

and the whole fucking thing would start over;

that celebrity we loved because he was hot;

and by hot I mean more than looks;

the kids were acting like no big deal;

but I felt I was being emptied;

then I felt a shadow moving in;

like the shadow of something you can’t even see;

or something you’re not supposed to;

my brother kept asking questions;

he wanted details no one else did;

I could see the chewed-up pizza on his tongue;

I said, Close your mouth;

he said, What’s your problem;

I said, Close your fucking mouth;

what was I even thinking then;

it’s hard to explain, I guess;

astronauts again, I guess;

forced travel through unfamiliar space;

nearly everything in it unreachable;

everything in it no better than anything else;

just hydrogen to helium;

just helium to something else;

and something else to something else;

so what good, I learned that day, was hot;

what good, I learned, was celebrity;

I’d always wanted to have it;

I often imagined, late at night, my entourage, my limousine, my attitude;

I often tried to will this future for myself;

though could I even believe in this future;

or could I only believe in the grander one, the destined one;

the temporary free fall;

the on and on, then off;

no wonder the kids shot at their heads, stuck out their tongues, fell to the ground, laughing;

we were all just so confused;

there were times I wanted nothing more than to break free from our orbit;

I wanted a force to come in, already, and upset it;

I’d been secretly holding on, I admit, to the hope of this force coming in;

not an asteroid force or a black hole force;

but the slightest shred of holy;

some shred of belief that everything would be revealed;

that the world was something conceivable;

a linear path directed toward some good;

but there would be more celebrity suicides;

and noncelebrity suicides;

and more explosion and more expansion;

how could you not overthink it;

but the kids got back to bowling;

the guy at the counter poured me another beer;

I wasn’t going to drink this one;

I’d already outgrown this moment;

I called our mother, said, Come get us;

but our father came instead;

my brother put up a fight out front;

he wanted to keep bowling, he said;

he was beating the other kids, he said;

he was now, my brother, officially, the enemy;

we were staring each other down across an invisible line;

in the car, our father didn’t talk;

my brother sighed again and again and again;

some old song played on the radio;

what was out the car window passed too fast;

I couldn’t focus on any of it;

all those houses whooshing by;

and all that grass;

and all those trees;

all those birds;

all those stars;