Spoon by Richard Siken, 2025

I grew up next to my stepbrothers, not with them. They were a dozen years older and already in their own apartments when our parents married. I was twelve. They were tall. They gestured with their arms when they talked, taking up space in the kitchen. They were biceps and shoulder blades, always talking above my head. They leaned in doorways. They leaned on the furniture, always coming from something or going somewhere. They were always touching things or pressing against them, deciding if they were solid or if they needed to be fixed. They were comfortable, powerful. They didn't worry about things. The world had made a place for them and they were intent on filling it. It made me petty and sore. They would drop by the house to borrow money or fix a cabinet door and they they would disappear. I was smarter but they had stamina. I was good with hypotheticals but they knew how to get things done, real things, with actual tools. They weren't going to take me to the movies or teach me how to fix a car. I wasn't solid. I was an absence they turned their backs to. There was no room in the room for me. I was my own imaginary friend. What did I know that no one else knew? I knew how to make things up. I could bounce my thinking against the walls and understand the plan of the house. I could see the boxes everything was held in and I could move them around. I had a certain capacity, which is a generous way of saying I had nothing. Their hands were full but their skies were empty. No clouds, no shapes to guess. I was blurry at the edges and unrelatable. Do not try to bend the spoon. There is no spoon. It is only you that bends. I was the spoon and there is no spoon. I was blisteringly invisible.