summer bones
remember being, like, twelve? yeah, that’s about the age. being twelve or thirteen or what the fuck ever. right before being a teenager. i’m sure their is some proper word for it but i don’t know it.
so you’re twelve and school is out and you spend a considerable amount of time playing video games, or reading, but you’re also always outside. you know every bump and divot in your yard, the grass has faded from a bright algae green to a scarecrow yellow, you play and chase and hide and seek until the sky has ripped away it’s last glowing tendril of gold and painted over with speckled twilight.
i remember climbing a tree at my moms house, she still lives there, alone now, absent of the cacophony of children. i think she misses it now and loved it then, my mother an advocate for the age old adage ‘kids being kids.’ this tree, almost the same as every other tree in the line of our driveway, save for two branches at the base that were stronger. wider. a calling.
my brother and i could hoist ourselves into the tree and scale up arachnid-like frame. angular, bony joints reaching for the skies or begging for the earth. we would carry ourselves up, tempting fate, challenging the branches to give under our weight or further our ascent.
maybe once a month, on our voyage, the acrobat on the trapeze, a snap would rip into our consciousness, tearing our daydreams down like the posters i tore out of my old room, and a branch would break. the uneasy grip of gravity tightening on our stomach, the terrifying feeling of falling, that for one instant, feels like flying. and we would hit the ground, different parts of us absorbing the damage, and rebounding. like a basketball plummeting twenty feet and bouncing askew before rolling to a still but safe calm.
remember that? wrecking yourself to just do it again the next day? seeking out that adventure, living that day as much as you could. it seemed like we were invincible. with those summer bones.
