I watch the clock on the microwave, 1:57 AM. It’s been saying that since I got back from practice, which ended at 9:30. Coach R. was on one tonight, made us run suicides for twenty minutes straight after drills. My calves are screaming. I made mac and cheese, the good kind with the butter and milk, for Leo and Maya at 7:00 PM exactly. My siblings. My *younger* siblings. Because the older ones, the ones who are supposed to be here, are always... elsewhere. Doing whatever it is they do. Usually involves cars I don't recognize and smoke that smells like disappointment. It's not a complaint, not exactly. More an observation. A data point. Like how many hours I spend in the kitchen vs. how many I spend studying calculus vs. how many I spend trying to remember what my own hobbies used to be. The numbers are skewed. Wildly. Tonight, after they were finally asleep (Maya had a nightmare about a spider, so I had to read her *The Very Hungry Caterpillar* twice), I sat at the kitchen table. My physics textbook open to chapter 7, "Work and Energy," but I just stared at the page, the diagram of the inclined plane. The problem isn't the work itself. I can do the work. I *do* the work. I make sure Leo’s lunch is packed, I remind Maya about her permission slip for the field trip, I boil the pasta, chop the whatever, even clean up the sticky counter after. All while trying to remember the formula for kinetic energy and what my English teacher means by "subtextual implications" for *The Catcher in the Rye*. It’s like my brain has separate partitions for "academic obligation" and "domestic management," and they don’t communicate, they just drain from the same power source until it's critically low. I finished the physics homework, eventually. And then I started thinking about tomorrow. Another morning practice, another day of classes, another evening making sure someone eats something vaguely nutritious because no one else WILL. The house is quiet now. Too quiet. My phone is vibrating, probably a text from Liam asking if I got the notes for history, but I can't even look at it. There's this hum, like an appliance running constantly in the background of my head, and sometimes it just gets LOUDER. This isn't sustainable. I know this isn't sustainable. But there's no off switch, you know? Just... keep moving. Keep doing the thing. One foot after the other, even when your calves are screaming and your brain is just… humming.