Every Bright and Broken Thing

Chapter Thirty-Two - Ezra

The origami astronaut floats between the fingers of one hand. In the other, the mostly empty bottle of pills. Two worlds at war. The first, a world where stars still shine and suns still burn. The second, a world where everything is dark and dead and fading fast.

I swallow a pill and a swig of beer, patting my cheeks as they flush with warmth, ignited by the intoxicants.

I'm so tired these days. And sore from sleeping in the front seat of my car for so many nights. Cold, too, thanks to my shattered windows. I spent the whole day hunting for any job I could possibly find – no luck. I haven't had a good shower in days and I know I look – and smell – like a mess. The longer I go without one, the worse I feel. I can't even look myself in the mirror anymore. I just want to hide away so the rest of the world doesn't have to see what I've become.

Parked along one of Lake Michigan's beaches, I climb out of my car and look out at the water. The Chicago skyline burns against the night sky and I can't help but think I should've been there, in one of those offices. I should've pursued a degree in business. What good has my art done me? All I have are empty canvases and abandoned sketches shoved into the trunk of my car. I could've been successful. Wealthy. Important. But I'm none of those things – far from it.

I sit down on the beach and watch the waves, holding Elaine's paper astronaut lightly between my fingers. In my stupor, I wonder if this astronaut has been my guardian angel all along. For years, the astronaut's helmet painted on the wall outside my apartment kept watch over me. Even as a child, I poured over books about space travel and dreamed of a home among the stars. Now, I hold the last good thing Elaine gave me between my fingers – the paper astronaut.

My life feels like paper. Frail and thin, the paper astronaut parallels what's left of my life. But instead of careful, considerate folds meant to form something beautiful, my life is like something very wrong. Like an amateur painter trying too hard to imitate Picasso. Like paper torn and tossed and very, very out of place. Like litter on the side of the street, I am spent and left in places I don't belong.

I blink, eyes dry and tired, body too heavy even though I've hardly eaten a thing this past week. I'm not alone on the beach. There's probably a dozen more homeless people. Mostly men. Mostly older. Mostly more weathered than I am. Though, I'm probably not far behind. I wonder if it happened the same way for these men as it did for me – everything becoming more and more out of place and wrong with their world until nothing was right anymore.

Off-balance.

Out of place.

I'm not supposed to be here. I was supposed to be a missionary or a businessman or the astronaut sailing on an ocean of stars. I'm not supposed to be... this. Somewhere along the way, I slipped from reality and crash-landed in some shadow world where everything is off-balance and all that's left is the aching, the reaching in a world made from the sinews of nightmares. And all I can do is try to tell myself to wake up.

A chill washes over me, deep down to my bones as the drugs sink their teeth like little monsters as if they were native to this shadow world. Behind me, buildings tower like wretched giants and yawning windows turn to eyes fueled by fire. Before me, the water stretches and crashes like untamed terrain, like a great invisible monster approaches from somewhere in the depths of this world. Through the haze, I can almost see its eyes through the fog. I can almost hear the violent boom of its footsteps.

I shiver, a cold sweat beginning to cover my skin. I look to the sky, but can't find the stars. The city lights are too bright and that makes me inexplicably sad. I look past the deep black of the empty universe, let my anger carry me further than my courage ever could. And I do something I haven't done in a long time.

"Does this make You happy, God?" I fight back the tears, clenching my jaw, waiting for a response. When none comes, I continue. "Do you even see me? Do you see what my life has become?" On my feet now, I thrust a trembling finger to the sky, careless that in my drunkenness I'm yelling at a vast expanse of deep, dark nothingness. "You took everything from me! You took Mom. You took my family. You took my future, my life."

I choke on a sob and take in a sharp breath. "Why?" I fall, knees to the sand and look up through misted eyes. "Why did all of this have to happen?"

I'm not mad at God. I'm mad at myself. And, like the impact of a tidal wave, it hits me how utterly lost and alone I am. Over and over again, the waves spill from the sea of stars and steal all the breath from my lungs. I'm going to drown in this deep, dark nothingness – this place made of monsters who live and rage in the tendons that stretch between the worlds.

"I need help," I cry through chokes and gasps. Buckled over, my face brushing the sand, I sob and rock back and forth.

Breaking, breaking, breaking.

Aching, aching, aching.

All over. All the way to my bones. Until there's nothing else left.

"Please. I need help." Snot and tears run in rivers down my face, mixing and mingling and falling to the sand. "Somebody help me. Please. I just need somebody to help me." I say it over and over again until it's all I hear and it's all I feel. Until it's all that's left of me.

Rocking back on forth on the shores of Lake Michigan, clutching Elaine's paper astronaut in my fist, crying out incoherently, everything inside of my breaks until all that's left of me is the breaking.

I'm an astronaut adrift in the deep, dark nothingness of outer space, on the edge of the universe where all the stars have burned out and all that's left is the deep, dark nothingness. I'm running out of air. Running out of room. Falling through time and space, faster than the speed of light, wrapped in nothing but the sound of glass breaking, helmet shattering.

And I think I almost hear the stars whisper, I am.