Astral Bodies
Seth Kirby
I stand, the center of my white-walled universe. The floor displays the usual assortment of stars: stray clothes (these are in multitude), random paper sheets with vast amounts of both knowledge and gibberish, and the bits and pieces that help me function as an average dysfunctional teenager. The carpet hasn’t been vacuumed in a few light-years—the most notable proof, I realize, being the smudgy gray bottoms of my feet as I crawl into bed. All after a day’s journey among my constellations.
I’ve had so much time (about a year) to exist in this room. I see my coats piled in the one chair provided to me when I first moved in. Surprisingly, this chair is a blessing. It’s wide, wider than basically every known chair in this house. It is a black-pleather asteroid that threatens to swallow me if I get close. It is good that I do not use it for more than the storage of clothing.
This entire space threatens to swallow me whole. The silence of 11:25 pm vacuums all possible sound out of the room; even the lizard living in the glass box across from my bed, the bearded dragon we call Spike, sits in silence. He knows that opening his eyes means he will cease having his lizardly dreams, longing for a hot patch of sand to bask on. There is also this transparent curtain, this dark matter in the room. It echoes in the silence, tugging my eyelids shut before lifting them up again. It is this insomniac dance I do tonight, the one where the music plays until I flick the light switch. When I do, the darkness inhales everything in its instant attention. I wonder to myself how an entire universe can become a black hole within a matter of seconds. That thought, too, travels away through the vortex’s eye, and with it I drift.
Light-years to light-years, this path is where I go when my galaxies align…
Soon after just moving in, I found myself staring at a mint green wall, squinted through the shadow of a dark-lit night sky. The moon was shining over us, covering every inch of our bodies: me, my sleeping brother, the air mattress.
There was a summer heat to everything there, as if covered in hot desert sand. The one fan in the corner blew weakly, swiveling left to right as if shaking its head. As the heat seemed to swell and swell, my body kicked off more of the bed covers, and I was forced to reveal more of my childish body. I considered shifting my weight to go to the bathroom, but I remembered where I was. The mattress below me was filled with air, like some sort of unknown rubber cloud. If I moved, it would retaliate by sending everything shifting on its side. The child who was close to my hip might’ve rolled off, or worse: he could have been freed from slumber, and he would have to wait with me too. I closed my eyes, shifting my nose over to the wall. Carefully, as to not wake him. I did not drift off.
Eyes open again, I studied the gentle tapping of a plastic sheet tacked to the wall. That sheet showed countries, states, a compass, oceans, and everything a plastic wall map should display. It was a relic, something we had in the last house we lived in. We used to use it for learning our states and countries, when we were homeschooled. The panning fan tossed wind under the heavy sheet, making a clingy ripping noise like a tarp as it comes off its spot on the wall. The fan turned away again, letting the air retreat back to the room. The curtain fell back into place as it did again and again with every short gasp of wind. It was the repetition of the act that made me think of breath, the lungs of a small room. Once more, I closed my eyes. Once more, I failed.
I turned back to my brother, his head softly smushed away from me onto a flat pillow. I reached out over him, touched the wall that he lay snugly against. Over my head, another wall loomed at about the same distance. At that moment, it was hard not to feel trapped. I didn’t like many things, especially not the heat that teased my skin into awareness. I did not like the cramped window next to my head, only showing the moon and a tiny portion of the roof next to us.
I focused, shut my eyes in prayer or desperate attempt. My brain soon synergized to another rhythm, one calmer, more subtly real. It was the actual set of lungs, the one beside me then in that darkened box. I let my arm fall from the wall, not to chop the sleeping kid in the side. I lay there, finding his pulse with my palm, and I matched it to my own. In this way, we were twin stars: motionless in the sky yet generating our own heat. Feeding off each other. There is more than just blood between us. I found my rhythm, the one that god tells me to dance nightly, and finally I succeeded. I drifted…
Back again, I find myself gasping for breath. I sit up in my bed, shivering because the all-powerful ceiling fan above me has been left on for too long, and I seem to have kicked off my blanket. I jump to my door, feeling the heartbeat inside my chest quicken. I flip my quasar light switch on again, watching as scorching rays blind my weakened eyes.
Through his door, I see him. My brother sleeps on his own bed now, bigger than the one before, with an actual frame. His shoulders are wider, his back larger. His hair lies differently on the pillow than it did. His breathing is a newer rhythm, but I can match it just the same, if I try. I stand dormant near the threshold of his doorway, another wormhole into a different place in time. I watch his body rise and fall, solar flares grasping outwards from the center of his galaxy. Within an instant, I wonder how two galaxies could be so close, threatening to collapse each other, and yet still sit so far away in space.