1 EVERYTHING | Can I tell you something? I took Introduction to Cosmology last spring. According to the experts, only 4.9% of the universe is ordinary, visible matter (planets, stars, galaxies, superclusters, etc). Of the remaining 95.1%, most of everything is dark energy—a fundamental force of nature that the experts say is accelerating the expansion of the universe. The experts do not know what dark energy is or where it comes from or what it looks or smells like. We just know what we can observe: gravity pulls things together, dark energy pulls things apart. The experts derived these compositions from the Friedmann Equations, which were derived from Einstein’s equations, which were puzzled out in carbon-based minds encased in flesh that grew from the mud of Earth.  

2 EQUILIBRIUMS AND RESONANCE, EVERYTHING FALLS INTO PLACE | I open the curtains in my bedroom every morning because there is no overhead light in my room. I am working as a developer and a researcher at two different labs, though I only get paid for half of one role. The days roll around and abide by a strict periodicity that is comforting/predictable and relentless/dreadful. Courtyards can be open on some sides, but not all of them, and stone courtyards facing west do not leak in the mornings as eastern-facing courtyards do. I am going off on tangents again – I just don’t want to check my emails. I don’t want to face my work. I don’t want to figure out what to eat today. There are menial tasks to be done in the mornings and things to attend to and problems to think through. I think through them. Mistakes can be catastrophic, though sometimes they are not. It is better to be safe than sorry. 

3 | I run in the mornings because the chill of the air is refreshing. Everything is open to me, and it’s good to have hobbies. Why live at all if you don’t have hobbies? Fresh moisture on the grass rubs on my ankles; the sky is a shallow, comprehensible blue. It is bright in the satisfying way that a morning brain craves. I trudge along. The courtyard around the block is empty, and it faces west. An old couple is setting up an empanada stall for the farmers market, even though it does not open for another three hours. I tried one once and never bought one again (it was just alright). I wonder if they recognize me. 

4 | There is never enough light. In the shower, the plastic liner keeps clinging to my wet body, and I can’t see all the little hairs on my legs as I shave. The farmers market comes to the courtyard around the corner every Thursday, and it is delightful. I brush my teeth and take stock of what I might need, what I can consume, what I should/should not consume, how much older I look than when I was sixteen, how sensitive my teeth feel today, how capable I feel to bear the dig of a bra or a tight waistband or blistering flats. I pee and sit on the toilet for a little while after I am done and then I weigh myself. It’s easier to keep it off than it is to lose it. I can’t remember who said that to me.  

5 | I walk by the empanada stand with a black leather tote filled with things that are not empanadas, and I wonder if they recognize me. The courtyard is filled with a buzz, not so sleepy anymore. A woman in a red apron rings an unpleasant cowbell as she collects for a food bank. The man behind the table selling Balkan specialties tries to loudly reel in every passerby, which puts him in the unfortunate position of being loudly ignored. A duo of folk musicians play at an enclosed corner by the awning of a restaurant underneath a white tent. Everyone is underneath white tents. It is to keep that impossibly deep sky off their heads. I fear that I, exposed, might trip and fall into it. My heels lose their grip on the stones, my heart floats up, and I am going. There is clothing brushing against my skin and skin against my skin and bags against my skin. Breath collecting around head-level, pushing the oxygen up into outer space. Did I mention I studied cosmology for a semester? Oxygen makes up approximately 1% of the 5% of the universe that is ordinary, visible matter. That is .05%, for whoever is curious. I am suffocating. 

6 I AM NOT 16 | I am not 16; I am 21, and I’m at college working this summer while everyone else has gone away (I’ve got to check my email). I bought two green peppers, one sweet red pepper that was very long and skinny, one yellow onion, a pungent clove of garlic, a dozen eggs, peach preserves, and bright yellow yarn. I’ll use the yarn to crochet a gift for my boyfriend who loves the color yellow. I process the produce, which delights me as well: I begin with a vinegar bath for pesticides and a good rinse with cold water, then I chop and organize everything into color-coded glass containers for future meals. I slice the tip of my finger in a mess of onion because all the knives are dull and my eyes are burning and there’s not enough light in here. I rinse my finger under the sink and a small flap of flesh ripples under the water freely; the blood runs down my arm and combines with green pepper mush in the basin. It runs up into the sky and takes me with it. Carbon comprises even less of the universe than oxygen. Am I made of carbon or am I made of glass? Silica. Oxide compounds. Hydrogen stardust. Old, ancient things recycled and re-worn. The empanada couple – we are part of the universal composition, but I am nothing without it. I am nothing without it. 

8 EVERYTHING II | Much of the standard cosmological model is aligned with the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is an observed/measured phenomenon of a near-perfect isotropic blackbody microwave radiation originating from the infant years of the universe. The CMB data implies that dark energy is a cosmological constant, meaning that as the universe accelerates apart, the percentage of matter decreases and the percentage of dark energy increases. Where are you going? Dark energy accelerates things away from each other, so we will keep flying apart faster and faster until there is nothing left to keep me here. 

9 CAN YOU TELL? | 

10 | Everything is flying away from me, faster than it was before. The courtyard is empty, and the stones are wet. If I climb out of the window, will I fall up or down? 

11 | I’ve got to go to the lab soon. I’ve got to check my emails. One of the green peppers was rotten. I forgot to mention that before, or maybe I just didn’t want to. I cut into it and the insides were brown, so I threw it into the sink and it exploded into mush and I collapsed on the ground and sank into a hole in myself. I chewed a piece of spearmint gum and my teeth ached like an old chair when I chewed. My dentist harps on me about it, but I used to smoke, so I figure all the gum and diet soda damage can’t be that bad. I am chewing gum right now. Chewing is better than snacking. I chew a pack a day. Anyways, I tore myself off the ground and there were crumbs on me because I don’t vacuum as much as I should and then I sliced my finger. Maybe the blood ran up my arm and into the sky. Maybe I went with it, too. I don’t know. 

12 HOLE | I am in this hole that is deep inside of myself. Nobody bears witness, so it doesn’t mean anything. I want you to look at me and tell me what you see. Oxygen flies up into space and becomes meaningless. Tiny. Empty. Hole. Hole or vacant. Empty/needing. I need to check my emails. I lie in bed and I get up and open the curtains even though nobody bears witness. I forget where I am sometimes. I lie in bed. I lose track of where I’ve been. Look around and tell me what you can see. My bedroom has yarns (I already had yellow yarn), three guitars, a bin of guitar pedals and a half-deconstructed pedalboard, a closet with accordion doors that don’t work anymore, a small TV I don’t use, curtains on a rod falling out of the wall, a guitar on a hook falling out of the wall, a carpet that needs to be vacuumed, a bed that needs to be made, towels that need to be washed, clothes that need to be washed. I need something. I need or want. I go to the lab across campus, because it may save me.  

13 WHERE AM I? | Everyone else works remotely most days. The campus is deserted. I unlocked the lab and was not so productive, and I locked it again when I left. When I am upset, I turn to a wall so that nobody can see my face. I am losing skin cells; they are accelerating away from me. I had a dream last night that I was smoking in a backyard in high school, and it filled my chest in a way that only a cigarette could and I lit it in a campfire as mosquitoes nipped at me and I roasted marshmallows for s’mores without thinking about how many calories are in a s’more. One of my green peppers today was rotten, and it destroyed me. I woke up craving nicotine as if the years I put between us meant nothing. When I call my boyfriend before bed, I cannot tell him this, and I don’t have anything else to say either. He is already so far away. 

14 | I open the curtains. I close the curtains. If the standard theory is correct, then everything began with a Big Bang, and nothing since has been created or destroyed. Thus, the “universe” was at a single point in space when the concept of space exploded into the concept of existence. I was there and you were there too, so we are the same thing. There are menial tasks to think through. We are the universe experiencing itself. Concepts of agitation exist to allow for relief. If I am lost in the tangle of consciousness that is the universe webbed out beyond the horizon of space, when I am returned and recycled again into stars and dust and dark things and light things, I am returned to an incomprehensible vastness. What of it? There was nothing in my email anyway. You are not listening anyway. The force of gravity grows weaker every day. Dark energy overtakes everything until we are diluted into a statistical nothingness. I open the curtains. I close the curtains. I lose my footing, fly up into space, and am accelerated away. 

15 GROUNDING | I open the curtains in my bedroom. The window faces a wall.

Callista Chong is always observing, if only 4.9% of what is out there.