My beautiful sister is eating a slice of watermelon. It tastes so good she shows me the whites of her eyes.

My slice is old. All the cells have gone dark.

My slice is old, I say.

She replies: Did you know Grimes is having Elon Musk’s alien baby?

She wasn’t listening.

I tell her I’m waiting for the real thing. I say every night I lie on our roof and spread my legs to the sky and wait for a falling star. Make me your mothership! I yell while I beat the shingles. In the morning, our father scratches his head because our roofing bills are completely out of hand. There goes his bonus from the button factory. There goes Christmas.

Everything’s a joke to you, my beautiful sister says, I’m through with this conversation.

What conversation? I ask. But she left a long time ago. A fly comes in instead and lands on my watermelon. It flies away because it’s not meat. And stay out, I say to the fly. There’s nothing for you here.