Tonight we all watch our drunk friends shoot fireworks at the sky, then when they get bored, at each other. I’m finally sorry that I slept through the wedding, the birthday party, the eclipse. It
is so hard, these days, to determine a loss from a forfeit. Summer halted and we thought
nothing of the pool full of dead crayfish in the backyard or the discarded maypole in the park.
We abandoned everything, moved slow with our boots and bodies full of creek water. We
abandoned the maintenance cart with caution tape stuck to the roof like party steamers,
the ghost stories, the hill to die on. Everything around us died. We lit fires inside a trash-can,
sat in the ruin of a ship, waited for spring with moths in our mouths. A blunt tucked behind the
ear. At the bar on Division, we ate our weight in fried chicken, drank 5-dollar boilermakers,
played pool, threw darts at nothing. We were so full of jello shots and bile. A direct consequence
of a direct action. One of us reached up a hand to turn off the lightbulb in the basement and was
shocked to death. We fed the squirrels more than the birds with our feeder, we held a small
funeral on the porch. We never looked both ways for cars coming at us in the street. The fine
print of the lease said something about not being able to smoke within the home, and in
smaller print, that no one could ever leave. We didn’t read it. We lit the blunt. We made
a shrine to the purple stain on the carpet. We bought a car off Facebook marketplace
with hopes of driving it directly into the sun, and I never told you, to take me back to
that town beneath the peninsula. To take your half of the cake, so I will feed my half to
the squirrels. Take all of the cynicism in your heart and write it down on a yellow slip
of paper, then throw it against the wind. Take this card, too, these letters
on the back of napkins, these receipts. There was an ad on the television
for rocket science camp where they teach children to fly rockets by shaking
a bottle of soda with some other shit so it explodes. I wondered what you
might have thought about it. Not that I think of you outside of a rocket camp
advertisement context, I mean. My aunt married a famous astronaut.
That’s a lie. My aunt married a line cook who cheated on her when their son was two. That
part is true. He cheated on my cousin’s second birthday party with his son’s kindergarten
teacher. Who was a man. Who would die later that year in my uncle’s arms.
When things got tough, my aunt used to say: How do you eat an elephant?
And we would all respond in chorus: One bite at a time! With the exception
of my grandmother, who is a vegetarian. Instead, she would respond:
I wish you had married an astronaut.
