Captain Lovell, ["My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars"]

My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars. My head turns to the left and it moves just like a pendulum. The kids laugh and shake it back to me, all the ways I’m stupid, not like them. But I know how the grass sounds when the locusts come, like a spaceship taking off and how it makes the air shake. Captain Lovell, I heard it in the branches and the leaves. I heard the rocket leaving. My teacher said it wasn’t so, that you’re past hearing but my father said I could. He puts his hands hard on my shoulders from behind and holds my head still with his looking. But I can feel how much I want to shake and let myself go loose and double like a cloud of mayflies on the lake, you know just how they rise so you couldn’t see just one of them, not even with your thumb held up to catch one with your eyes. It’s something I can’t do that Babe and David can, can’t sight the stars or use a telescope or ever fire a gun. Dr. Lovell, I like to think you’re spinning and can’t feel it like I can’t feel the world shake unless I’m really tired and then it’s like a gift to let it go and just stop trying so hard. I like to think you let go too and when the kids run at me and move their heads from left to right and call me “Zigzag” I look up and wish myself up there with you just calm and swinging through the stars.