– After Jane Wong

I am someone who looks directly at the Sun. In a pinch a spoon can be used to dig a grave. In 2006 I fall asleep by the pool and wake up with sun poisoning. After a deer ruts against it, our cosmic crisp apple sapling grows at an angle. The Milky Way orbits around a black hole called Sagittarius A. There is a ring of empty space around Sagittarius A. No one knows why. 

I buy four apples at the grocery store and it costs eight dollars. Ohio roads are sprayed with radioactive brine to suppress dust. Scroll scroll scroll girl says sunscreen causes cancer. In 1600 Giordano Bruno is executed for claiming the Earth revolves around the Sun. It is not the black hole that is eating the stars. Each apple is the size of a softball, is mealy inside.

Our blue sky scatters the white light of the sun, making it appear yellow. In 1993 I am born. Scroll scroll scroll guy says God created Earth 5,000 years ago. I gather black walnuts in an orange bucket. Their tarry brown rinds stain my hands for weeks. In 2006 my best friend bleaches her hair the color of straw. The Sun is the natural object known to be closest to a perfect sphere.

In 2006 I think I am being called by God to go to outer space. Our chickens escape and my husband spends hours building a new fence out of steel. Last year we harvested twenty pounds of strawberries, so we don’t cover them with netting this year. All of our berries are eaten by robins. The Sun is about halfway through its lifespan.

 In 2010 my mother gets a biopsy of a spot on her face. After college I gain eighty pounds in a year. The universe is constantly expanding. 

Sunflowers turn their faces to follow the Sun across the sky. In 2025 I try to write a poem about rehab. It’s all cigarettes and fury and the wet orange heat of Florida. I pray I learn to photosynthesize so I no longer have to eat. In 2007 I’m still dripping from the shower when my best friend calls me screaming: my dad is dead my dad is dead my dad is dead.

Broadleaf plantain can grow in the cracks of Cleveland asphalt. There is no center of the universe. God says, “Let there be light!” And there is light. Bitter oranges go unharvested on a tree in Lisbon; their mushy carcasses accumulate in the gutters.

Don’t be fooled by the white sheen of winter. Sunlight reflects off the cold snow crystals, can still burn.

Nebulae twirling in deep space, condensing into stars. Everyone at the party is drinking blood-red sangria. I pound four glasses of orange juice. The radium wanders into the water and the grass and the crops. The river oats by the road cannot be eaten. When I’m nauseous I’m impatient so I make myself vomit. Girls lick the points of their paintbrushes so many times that their jaws rot off.

After rehab I gain sixty pounds and don’t even notice. On the day I am fired our quail are massacred by a raccoon. My best friend and I mix Jose Cuervo and OJ and watch The L Word. We black out on her mom’s couch. My stomach—a black hole.

The universe is not expanding into anything, nor from any central point. My wedding dress no longer fits. I keep it in a bag in my closet, just in case. My husband buries the dead in the compost pile. On my birthday and 100th day of sobriety I celebrate by drinking two bottles of rosé. It is getting faster. 

One quail is alive but too injured to save. I yank her thin neck, break it. I think I get more sympathy for being an addict than for being a fat person. Is this brilliance? The first doctor I go to for a fat disorder diagnosis tells me I am too fat to diagnose. Two baby blue jays on a sidewalk, broken.

By the age of 14 my bra size is DD. Eventually the Sun will burn out. Everything on Earth will die. Before the sunset: a green flash. During Cleveland winters I take the maximum allowable dose of supplemental vitamin D. The Big Bang happened everywhere all at once.

Someone once told me that all poetry is about death.

Faster.

Every galaxy is hurtling away from every other. 

Everyone is the center of their own observable universe. In traditional tarot decks, the Sun represents radiance, abundance, and joy. In 2003  I pretend I have a migraine so I don’t have to go to school. I am homeschooled for three months. The Earth is heating up.

My paintbrush tastes lemon yellow, crimson red, burnt sienna. I get into the car in July and the steering wheel burns my hands. Who first learned that plants eat sunlight?

Pythagoreans believed there was a “central fire” that the universe revolves around. The United States is responsible for one quarter of all carbon emissions since 1750.

I go for a consult for a breast reduction. The doctor says that my BMI is too high to operate and that he won’t risk it. What if I’m willing to risk it? Less than half of all Americans believe that human activity is responsible for global warming. The doctor says that the anesthesia would be too dangerous for someone of my size. The doctor recommends weight loss surgery.

There is a city of salt mines under Lake Erie: miles of tunnels. hundreds of rooms, thousands of pillars of salt. I’m not afraid of dying. The United States is the only developed country to not have signed the Paris Climate Agreement. Good things happen to those who wait.

In 2012 my college boyfriend gets turned on when he watches me eat. Sometimes when the robins are singing my neighbor will come outside and scream “SHUT UP!” Hungry for hunger. Sometimes I talk to my brother who was never born. Sometimes I want to be a man, but I don’t want to be a fat man.

In 2007 my father watches me stretch my arms, notices the pull of my t-shirt across my chest. He tells me to never stretch like that in public.

I leave pieces of myself behind, like scales.

During the heat wave we lose power for four days, throw all our food away, drape wet t-shirts on our necks. I listen to the radio and pretend it’s an oracle. “Somebody’s Watching Me” plays twice in an hour. Our garden is beautiful but it was born out of fear. When the trucks stop coming, what will we eat? I wonder if I should learn to shoot a gun. I wonder if I should learn to shoot a gun and then buy a gun. Two guns.

What does forty-six billion light years look like to you? I am a palimpsest of everything I’ve ever loved. I am trying to tell you that this is real. The inside of the sun contains the same power density as a compost pile. I am always trying to escape the gravity of myself.

In 2006 I have my first existential crisis after watching a movie about the Sun dying. I fly on a plane and the armrests bruise my thighs. As a child I did not practice piano because I didn’t want my parents to hear me make a mistake.

Are we too late?

It’s second nature to suck in my stomach. One more step. Both of my parents voted for Trump, all three times. The Sun doesn’t give a shit about us dying. I wonder what the turning point will be.

Can you begin to envision deep time? Deep space? Grapes melt into raisins on a summer-soaked vine. In directionless space an astronaut extends their hand.

Maybe this is all there is.