Kayfabe
All the news in the world makes me crave innocence. So here it is, in the form of an unalived darling — the opening section from my very first manuscript [atemp], c. 2017.
Forget all the Greco-Roman business.
I’m talking about the professional stuff. Your Macho Man, Monday night, spandex wearing, roid raged, screaming at the TV from behind your microwave dinner, soap-opera type of wrestling. The kind you watch at flea markets for a dollar.
That’s my image of innocence. One you’d frame and place it on your mantle if you could print memories. And that image is of Jonah Galilee standing at the edge of his roof, a late Summer’s late afternoon sun behind his silhouette, waiting to jump.
His toes were curled over creaky gutters, which barely hung onto his family’s old house itself, as he looked out across town.
I lay five or six feet below him, looking up at him, pretending to be unable to move.
He called for me to move further away, and I did, then lay lifelessly again. I could see he bent his knees for launch.
Ready? he said.
Don’t land so close this time.
His arms raised towards the clouds.
From the top turnbuckle, he hollered.
His blonde bowlcut lifted off his head as he leaped from the roof, his body sideways with an elbow spearing towards me. He landed as close as he always did on the trampoline. We bounced high in the air together, flailing like fish on deck. I pretended that it had burst my ribs into a thousand and one pieces like the pro wrestlers did, but it didn’t actually hurt at all.
We laid in the warmth quiet then with our arms pillowing our heads. He asked if I wanted a turn.
I gotta go, I said and rolled off the tramp to pull my shoes over blackened socks with holes in the heels and toes. Stop by in the morning, I said. My mom wants a picture of us before school.
I opened the gate and left the backyard. Jonah sat on the side of the trampoline.
Think much’ll change this year? he asked.
I shrugged and closed the gate. Don’t forget the picture.
I stepped onto the porch of my grandparents house where I lived, just a house down from the Galilee’s. Jonah had begun jumping again by himself above the yard full of dead grass, which hadn’t been watered since his mom was around.
A burn stoked in my chest as I thought about starting high school the following day. Another Summer was ending, and only a few were left. But seasons are like anything good, just temporary.