Nothing throws them off course for long; when they commit to their orbit, they commit for life.

It seems that no matter where I try to go, no matter how hard I try to escape, I will always have two bright moons circling around me.

Oh, the irony: waste away, and they look harder.

Why a zero? Why dizzy and unable to think?

To think is to focus. No food, no focus. No internal focus, no awareness of external focus.

With nothing happening inside, nothing can happen out.

Shrink yourself down to nothing and there'll be nothing left to focus on.

Treatment. A word I wish I could erase from my rear view mirror. We sat in the same melodramatic circle every damn day.

Holly distributed the Hunger-Fullness Continuum one afternoon during Meal Time Therapy to unravel our eating from our emotions, to reduce it to something purely physical.

0 - You are wobbly and dizzy. You can hardly think. Most people have to go all day without food to get close to being a 0.
1 - You are still very hungry. You are irritable and cranky.
2 - You are very hungry, on the verge of a starving feeling.
3 - You could definitely eat, but you're not on the verge of collapse. The urge to eat is strong.
4 - You are only a little hungry. Your body is sending you messages that you might want to eat.
5 - You're not hungry, but not satisfied just neutral. If you stop eating now, you will need to eat again in 1 to 2 hours.
6 - You are a notch past being neutral. You could definitely eat more.
7 - You are feeling more satisfied getting full. If you stopped here you would need to eat again in 4 to 5 hours.
8 - You are quite satisfied-full, in fact. If you stopped eating here, you wouldn't need to eat again until at least 5 to 6 hours.
9 - You are becoming uncomfortable. You could force down another three bites but your body no longer wants anything.
10 - Your body is screaming, get me out of here! This is no fun anymore. If you eat anymore, you will explode.

Everyone despised her; she was a dumb fucking bitch. We were all there because we valued being zeros so greatly that we were willing to die for it.

And so we battled with each other to be better zeros. In a day or two, the continuum was trashed.

Eating, sleeping, thinking, breathing (or not) a single focus is extreme and potentially very harmful.

Like light tunneled through a magnifying class, their focus, called love, burned a hole in me.

I burst into flames.

Of course I saw it coming, how could I not? Like a tapeworm it nibbled at my gut for years, until suddenly there came a point when the light came on too strongly, penetrated too deeply. If I didn't act quickly it would seep into my wormholes and tear me open from the inside out. I knew that fightin it would fuck with the orbits of others, that it would throw everything off course.

Still, I couldn't move. A deer on an unlit road, I was ready to hit the glare.

From behind a coffee-shop window, I once saw a golden retriever leaning out of a silver Chevy pick-up. His nervous sniffing and furrowed brow told me he detected a scent that excited him, one particular smell that he couldn't get enough of.

Ultimately, it was just his own odor being blown by the wind back up into his nostrils, but how could he be expected to know that? Me, on the other hand, I'm an evolved human. I knew. I knew...

Hummingbirds are called hummingbirds because of the humming noise that their wings make as they beat, sometimes up to 80 times per second.

If their wings couldn't beat so fast, they couldn't drink the nectar that fuels their lives and they wouldn't hum.

If they didn't hum, what would we call them?

My father's career is not a job, but rather an occupation with creativity. Sometimes I think he's addicted to the promises attached to musical success; the fame, the glory, the chance to prove himself in the world. But most other times, I think he's just addicted to sound and movement. He hums when he flosses, when he dresses, as he stirs his coffee. I caught him one time, playing his guitar on the toilet.

My father stunted his budding musical career to stay at home and raise me. He loves me, I am his pseudofocus. He's good at pretending not to look back.

Thump, thump, thudullapptsshh. OWwwwmuuttthherrrfuck-er!

Ah, tripping up the stairs: a talent of mine, made better through a shit ton of practice. With my face pressed up against the peeling paint of the porch, I can hear Dad in the basement, practicing. I can't tell whether it's arpeggios or Jerry Lee Lewis he's pounding out. Either way, he won't hear the doorbell, or the phone ring.

He's focused and I'm locked out.

From afar in your orbital, you're drawn to the light: you want to move closer, to drink the illumination.

Do so, find that we burn, scald whoever comes near us. We repel the gravitational pull with flames.

Planets, green with life, keep your distance!

We're paying all of this money, and you just sit around and watch television all afternoon, he says.

What does he know about money? It's all my mother's. He's off in his own orbital, focusing on music and being a pain in the ass. (This is a lie. I wish it were true.) Nowhere near my mother and me.

I bet Lucy doesn't have to scream and pull teeth to get Sophie to practice. She's in the Level VI book now, playing sonatas. I know that Disney songs are fun, Emily, but they're not real music. You should be playing real music by now.

My mom buzzes around in tailored pantsuits all day, the type you see female politicians wear. She has tiny feet, size 5, and often buys three or four pairs of the same shoe if they happen to both fit her well and come in different colors. Souls wear through quickly when they are walked and stomped and trampled on, and my endless efforts to repel do so to hers a lot.

In the spirit of Mother's Day, I cannot help but indulge in the cliche: my mom is the most selfless, devoted person that I have ever known. There is no telling what my mother wouldn't do if I only asked her.

But it's too much. She's too good.

Though her martyrdom comes with the best of intentions, there comes a point! In every child's life! When they need their parents to hate them right back, to not give a crap, to also slam a goddamn fucking door!

One August, Sophie went to go visit her family in Ecuador and brought me back a doll, one wearing a cerulean shawl and a woolen wrap skirt. The doll's flesh is a tawny translucent plastic, and pleated black threads stitched into the middle of her three-inch-head that expand up and out, delineating a strong center part. The doll's eyes are glassy, with shrunken spider legs for eyelashes. Though there is clearly nothing behind them, she looks so intently focused.

I am an only child because when I was three, my dad was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. At the point when he was finally declared healthy, I liked to think my parents were so thankful to have his life that they didn't even consider trying to bring about another one. That, or they were just happy with me.

In reality, chemotherapy rendered my dad sterile. I was, and continue to be, my parents' only shot at the perfect child. Though perhaps not by choice, I ended up being the sole focus of their lives. I had to make them okay with that.

I had to be the best.

My venue of choice for impressing other parents was always their dinner table. It was easy: I ate everything on my plate and usually asked for seconds, sometimes thirds. I tried everything, liked everything. Complimented appropriately. Didn't pick at or play with food. Sophie pushed her food around with a fork, leaving uneaten mountains of beef-a-roni on her plate. She took two to three sips of milk.

Sophie was my first best friend. Back then, having a best friend only meant having a foil for me to prove to my parents my own greatness and worth as a biological investment. If at first I wasn't their focus by choice, I was going to be.

Oh, hello--welcome, welcome! Emily, all of the other kids are down in the basement, why don't you join them? We've got plenty of toys down there. Go play, go play!

I tug at my mother's blouse and whisper in her ear:

Mom, I don't wanna go, they don't like me. I don't know how to play with them.

That's okay, honey--just sit here with your father and I.

It was far easier to sit quietly and nibble at hors d'oeuvres than it was to get some seven-year-old to like me. Brenda, you just have to try this brie, it's soo decadent--ooh, yes, try it with one of the rosemary crackers. Right? Isn't it simply heavenly? Of course, I can feel my hips growing as we speak but it is so worth it. Oh, how rude am I-Emily, dear, would you like to try some?

Brie was never very appealing to me, maybe because I was six. That said, I still preferred its fungal tang to the prospect of playing Nintendo with other children, so I ate it. The adults were impressed, my parents were proud.

Like planets around a sun, our lives must have a steady focus: this is what childhood has taught me. Without one, gravity would have no pull. Still, it is our endless attempts to escape these orbits that propels us; it is our feeling imprisoned that creates the velocity we need in order to keep moving forward, to keep moving fast.

I am an only child, myself a steady focus. Orbits are contingent upon me. I cannot escape, or even try to. I can have no velocity.