Entropy Sunday. It is Sunday. I think about what this means.

It means that, since I heaved myself into bed a million years ago, the Earth has made another rotation, and so I have simultaneously hurtled through space and grown stale where I lay on my bare mattress. It means that another night has passed while I fought to harness the secretive energy in my body, the energy which the First Law of Thermodynamics tells me is there but which I cant seem to find. This energy is not far enough away to allow for sleepmy hands shake too muchand not close enough to allow me to move in any direction. I lay curled in a ball and coiled like a spring, wondering if I can count to 67,000, the speed at which the Earth orbits the Sun. It means another mark on the wall since I saw another person, face-to-face. Today. Is. Sunday, I try to say, but my cracked lips and cottonball tongue cant connect, and the weak gust of air that escapes is full of dust and skeletons. The floorboards of my one-room apartment shudder as the train rolls by below, and I grit my teeth as my ribcage shudders in unison. The metal menace retreats and the floorboards settle again, but my rabbitheart is thumping too hard in my chest, and I curse myself for not being able to eat anymore and so put some glue back in the places that are breaking apart. Sunday. Sunday is my hardest day. Its because Sundays are liminal placesthe beginning of a new week and the end of the last, all at the same time. They do both functions poorly. Sundays want to be peaceful, but theyre wasteful. They want to be preparatory, but you cant prepare for what you dont know, and so they are just the erosion of what you have already lived. An aftertaste masquerading as something else. Entropy. I am Sunday. I look down at my hands. The knuckles are cracked. I move my head, barely, and look out the window by my bed at the people walking down below. If I had a spaceship strong enough, I could travel the light years that separate me and them. I cant remember the last time I left this place. I cant remember faces. The elusive energy inside me is roiling again, and I dont know what it will do this time. It feels like the beginning of a quasar. The book next to my bedthe only thing that lets me forget for a whileis stuffed full of dog-eared pages, but the page on quasars is almost crepe paper, Ive read it so much. I close my eyes and my cracked lips form the words as the energy imploding inside me begins to char my veins. A quasar is the deadliest thing in the Universe, a swirling cauldron of heated gas. This beast has a heart of darkness: A supermassive black hole larger and more powerful than 100 suns. I force my knees up a little higher and hug them to my chest, hoping to hold all the pieces together with my arms when Im almost out of glue. I think about black holes. Black holes are places where the laws of physics collapse. Such places really exist; one could visit, if they had the means. All order breaks down there, and black holes bloom like ink stains, and entropy increases until existence means decay. Sometimes such places are far away, hovering on the edge of space. Sometimes such places are what exist just behind the crepe-paper-skin of the old man at the park, or the woman at the check-out counter, or the lost girl shut away tight inside her box. I think my heart might finally be stopping from the weight of nothingness. Then, silently, like all explosions would be in space, something outside changes. A cloud is blown away, and whitehot sunlight suddenly invades the dirty windows, colliding like shards against my vein-lined eyelids and making the whispers in my skull clash like cymbals. I hug my knees to my chest so tight my ribs crack and I remember why Sundays are hard, why every day is hard, and the Sun burns so hot that I cant remember how fast the Earth orbits it. I squeeze my eyes tight against the light but it gets in anyway and it burns without warming me and my skin prickles with goosebumps because my body doesnt know what the rules are anymore, and I am breaking down, and entropy is moving in, and I cant look at what Ive become. I reach for the

book on the table but it falls to the floor and I realize that all of my thoughts about quasars were too close to the truth because I can feel the first tremors of the panic attack sweep through me, and the Lost Girl is losing herself, and I just. Want. Out. Out. Out. Ou I am moving now, moving without thinking, a comet streaking into the kitchen, slam!, drawer shaking, streaking back to my bed, so fast I can still see my comets tail shimmering in the molten air, spine pressed against the metal spine of my bedframe, heat in my hand but not in my chest. I dont want Sundays anymore, or Mondays, or holidays, or days of shaking following sleepless nights. And even though the anxiety has lit me on fire from within, my skin is still so cold, and Im alonealonealone and I cant remember when I last saw another person, face-to-face. The heat in my hand whips upward, a white band drawing my eyes like a coronal mass ejection, and I stare at the object Im clutching. The tip tilts down towards my wrists as if pulled by gravity, and I can barely see it for the sunlight. I cant see or feel anything anymore, and thought has decayed so that all I am is the quasar with a black hole for a heart and the Lost Girl is almost gone. I think Im crying, but Im too far away to tell, and I lay my arm flat against my leg, palm up, like Im meditating. I am ready now, but a shudder of pain rips open the last of the glued-together parts, and I hunch over a bit, my unoccupied hand sliding to the ground to steady me, and landing on the wilted cover of my bedside book. I stare at the book and gravity dictates that I pull it closer, and words are swimming infront of my eyes. I focus, hard, and find the words trembling before me: In 1977, NASA launched the spacecraft Voyager into space. There was no specific destination envisioned for the spacecraft, but rather, the ship was intended to carry a record of humanity for any intelligent, extra-terrestrial life form that would happen to encounter it. The record, called the Voyager Golden Record, contains 27 samples of music and noises which scientists felt illustrated a portrait of the human experience. My hand shook, flipping a few pages ahead, and the words bloomed once more. Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground is a gospel-blues song written and performed by American musician Blind Willie Johnson. The moniker came about because, as a child, Johnson was blinded when his mother poured bleach into his eyes. Johnson taught himself how to play guitar, and in 1927, he recorded Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground. The song is primarily an instrumental and features Johnsons bottleneck slide guitar and characteristic picking style, accompanied by humming and moaning. It has the distinction of being one of 27 samples of music included on the Voyager Golden Record. The song was chosen as the human expression of loneliness. Johnsons life is particularly compelling on its own, as well as in relation to the Voyager mission. He often struggled with starvation, and, in 1945, his house burned to the ground. With nowhere else to go, Johnson was forced to sleep in a wet bed in the ruined remains of his home until he contracted malaria in the August heat and died. His life was characterized by suffering, and he did not become known for his music until after his death. Interestingly, because Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground is immortalized on the Voyager Golden Record, the song about loneliness and being forgotten will exist long after earthly writings have gone to waste. Johnsons song about hopelessness is carried along, every moment, by a vessel crafted and deployed by the human hope for communion with another. I take a breath. I take another. The slash of sharp heat clutters from my hand. I take another breath. I touch the soft, white underside of my wrists. Theyre warm. I remember how much of our energy is released as heat. I feel my skin warm with the heat that Blind Willie Johnson, bow-backed over his guitar, released into space, which I know is there because the First Law of Thermodynamics tells me so. I think about how I will never see him face-to-face, and yet the particles of him cant be destroyed, and so in some way, I encounter them even inside my box, even curled into a ball on my bare mattress. I sit for a long time on the floor. I probably look pretty lonely. But I am not alone.

Perhaps, this Sunday, I will go outside.