Don't ask me about this.

Zombies, ninjas, pirates, robots.
They've got nothing on hippos.

Speaking to a parent who is now a shell of the person you once thought of as exempt from the laws of mortality, holier than God.

Just open face-slapping, over and over again.
Just when you think that it’s over.
Whammy, there it is again.

Hers Buzzing

I used to watch her rattling off her thoughts at a pace usually reserved for the enraged, or in-denial. I never listened. Just watched. She would get home from work and immediately begin, even before having unwrapped her scarf from her neck. The volume of her voice would rise and fall as she moved through our tiny apartment, setting her things carefully down in their proper places: Shoes on the welcome mat inside the closet, hat on the microwave with the other hats, jacket on the corner of the futon, her bag on the bedroom doorknob.
I would park myself down on my favorite patch of hardwood in front of the futon and watch. Watch and nod when appropriate. My favorite was when she washed dishes and her voice reverberated in the awkward space between the sink and the cabinets, and she would stop to assure herself that she had my attention, "Don't you think?," or "Isn't that strange?" I would respond, "Absolutely," in my voice, tinny against hers buzzing.
There was no greater joy than observing her in her frantic and furious way, and looking forward to what she would feel like later that night. In our bedroom, her head against my chest. Her rambling speech quieted, her nervous energy slowed to a dull throb, lost in the language of exhaustion.

I had a Ugandan penpal when I was 8.

My penpal in Uganda only wrote to me once. He liked soccer, he liked drawing, and he wanted to visit the United States someday. He was afraid of spiders because his older brother always tickled his ears with long grasses at night—the first thing to come to mind, every time, was that spiders were trying to climb into his head. I can understand this.

I responded that I also liked soccer, I also liked drawing, and that I was afraid of blood and ghosts. I told him that this wasn't my brother's fault, because my brother is much younger than I am. I told him I was afraid of blood because my father fainted once at a fair at the park by my house. The back of his head hit the pavement and a big circle of blood appeared and grew bigger and bigger around his head. He woke up but could only make a sound like an upset animal, like a goat. Unnnggggh, unnngh. And his face looked waxy, like he was a dummy in the movies with really fake-looking dead bodies. I thought he was going to die too and I wanted to kiss him, but the blood made my knees feel like someone was tickling them, maybe with a long grass.
And I'm afraid of ghosts because I see them standing above me at night. They have long hair that they brush, and they aren't white, they're dark and limp-looking, like coats hanging in the closet when the lights go out. And they never mention anything, even though I always ask. They just stand there and brush their hair, looking almost bored doing it.

I'm older now, and sometimes wonder about my penpal. I wonder why he never wrote back. I wonder if he still draws, or plays soccer, or if he's still afraid of spiders. I wonder if he ever thinks of me and my father's blood. Or if he thought my ghosts were tame.

The Surface of the Moon, My home, 4pm

I wake up in the buzzing quiet of my sleeping-room.
I watch Earth looming huge and jaunty out my window.
Where is Levitown, I wonder. And why are my vessel's memories so hazy?

To be continued.

Levitown, 3:30pm

This isn't my piss. I can tell because my boxers aren't wet. It's only my pant leg. Someone pissed on me in the night. I experience something akin to the process of grief, but crystallized in one moment.
I look down at my hands. Hoping the answers are written there.
They aren't.
But there is dirt worked into my palms, like I've been digging in a garden. I try to spit on them, but can't muster a droplet. I think for a moment of wringing my pants for urine, but scrap the idea and decide to look for a bathroom instead.

to be continued.

Levitown, 3pm.

I wake up in the mid-afternoon heat of the suburbs in July. My eyes feel slow in their sockets, like they're floating in glue. My throat is burning. Way in the back. It's a fire I can't swallow down. I have no memory of vomiting, but I'm sure, as sure as I know that I'm not in my own bed—I'm SURE I vomited last night.
I peel myself away from the pillow and immediately I realize: There is a reason I did this to myself.
Immediately after that, I realize: I pissed myself at some point in the night.

to be continued.