1. the rubbing of one object or surface against another
There’s no good way to pour gasoline. i watch the stream, arms shaking beneath the weight of the bloodred can.
i hate the color red.
The thought out of left field—my hand slips and gas splashes my jeans. i grin: Mom will complain.
No. i can’t walk in the house smelling like you. She calls me your name again & again and the weight of it sticks against my flesh.
i flip the cap back onto the tank—once, twice, flick the edges with my fingers and watch it spin. i get three clicks with my car, a ratchet of assurance, but here i have to trust it will hold.
i mount the hard seat—gray leather cool for once, bathed in autumn air—and pop the choke. A twist of the key and the engine clears mucus from its throat but fails to breathe. i have no idea how much we’ve used the mower; right after you bought it, one of us left the headlights on for a week in the garage. Burned clean through the battery and threw the hour-meter out of whack. Guess we never bothered fixing it. Just drove the thing straight on, old after the first year.
i suppose we’ve had it at least six years. Construction orange Husqvarna—it’s always been an eyesore. i remember its predecessor, the old green mower, tiny if i saw it now, but my foot couldn’t reach the clutch when you first taught me to use it. In trying to turn it off, my overextended leg slipped off the pedal—a gunshot from the engine and you came running out of the house, face darkened.
Were you worried about the mower or me?
i turn the key again, yank the choke for the third time, and the engine catches. It sounds surprised as it sputters to life. i wonder if the mower can tell our weight difference, why it still seems to cut better for you. The meter reads 312 hours, but who knows how long it’s been?
—
Fifteen minutes into mowing i realize i have the blade on the wrong setting, chopping the grass too short, killing out of absentmindedness.
Your mind is like a steel trap, Mom tells me often. i wonder what it cages.
I think of it like tossing a baseball, a friend told me the other day.
You really only have two or three, and you throw the first one, ask a question—how are you?—and wait for the toss back.
But it doesn’t come.
And then you throw the second one—wait.
That one clangs in your steel head with the other.
Then you have the third one, and you have to decide whether you’re tossing that one, too.
On the worst days, i walk down to the baseball field on campus, regardless of weather, and hope to see them playing. Simple game: catch & release. Give & take. i’m 100 miles away from you, but who’s counting?
Breathe in. Hold it.
i adjust the blade and release my breath. A few months ago, i would have panicked as i failed to cut your way. But i’m learning the intricacies of how you don’t control me.
And the ways you do.
We used to go to a lot of baseball games. When i was nine or ten, you bought me some gloves, a bat, and a mitt for my birthday. i tried hard to grin as you showed me how to flatten the mitt, running it over with the car, back & forth, as i squatted in the gravel to witness.
You would ask me after the games why i didn’t pay better attention, why i wasted time scratching patterns in the field dirt, kicking around the goose poop. i remember the look on your face as you haunted the first base bleachers. And my every swing caught only air.
A bump in the lawn jolts me from reverie, and i wonder why i’m doing this. You should have mowed yesterday. You should have freed time for my visit home. Should have been there when i opened the door late last night. Some kind of appreciation that i was back safely—a flick of the wrist and i would have caught the ball, barehanded.
The roar of the engine grinds my thoughts to dust. i rub my hands together to spark feeling.
—
2. conflict, as between persons having dissimilar ideas or interests; clash
When i talk about it, people tell me it’s okay to be angry. And i want to. i want to write the story of me, the boy dragged into all the arguments, the noise, the passion and falling out. Your flushed red cheeks.
But i’ve watched everything like i watch the leaves now. The motor drowns out any thought of hearing, and all becomes silent, slurred. The steel blades churn leaf after rusty leaf, and a sort of fire breathes from the blower. i strain to hear the noise, to lodge myself into the real and present, but all i can see is one leaf flipping through the air, confused.
Stop gravity. Let rust dance.
—
i am most like you here, grass half-cut, chewing my tongue like you always do, trying to figure out the most efficient path to finish. Prowl the perimeter of the untamed lawn, ever inward.
You don’t look at me when you speak anymore.
How are you?
Good. You?
Alright.
Swing and a miss. Three strikes. Leaves floating outside the bounds of gravity.
Each jolt in the lawn lets another fear claw free from my caged head.
i am just like you. i know why you do what you do. You’re scared. You’re only hurting, afraid to give your all because that would mean if you fail you have no defense.
The mower spins circles ever tighter.
In our lawn is a chain of evergreens, planted when we first moved here. i stood taller than them then, but their bulk has outgrown me. Their nettles scratch my skin as I thread the mower through the gaps. It barely fits between the trees anymore.
i want to tell you all of this. i want to show you i understand, to make you know i still love you, that i’ve never held anything against you, that all is forgiven—it was always forgiven.
But we talk about baseball.
—
My thumb traces stitches.
There is comfort in its weight, even as i toss the ball up a foot or two and miss the catch. It thuds on the wood stairs of our garage, rolls under your new, red hybrid, an imposter in our house.
i hear your voice, which has been rising slowly for the last five minutes, falter.
i freeze. Don’t come out. Don’t see me with my mitt, far too small for my hand now. Don’t find the leaf-tear crusted on my cheek.
Am i scared you’re leaving or that you never showed up in the first place?
Once, i velcroed on those gloves and used the bat you gave me to pound dents into the garage throughway door. It’s steel-enforced wood gave more and more with each swing. i wanted to see if i could do something you never expected me to do, but i grew too tired, gave into the fear of you finding me, caught at the warning track.
You never did figure out what happened. When guests saw the imperfect door, you blamed it on a goose, flapping madly through the shut garage.
(i still remember its beak smashing soundlessly against that cage.
Again.
A-gain.
A gain.)
Flying past the outfield fence, over the evergreens.)
—
3. physics - a force that resists the relative motion or tendency to such motion of two bodies or substances in contact
i looked a deer in the eye yesterday. We both startled when it ran out of the trees, escaping some distant barking. Must have been separated from its mother—shaking as it stared at me, knees in the dirt, arms open.
This is what i want to write about. Beauty in nature, problem & resolution.
But sometimes, the deer just stares, and nothing happens other than that i’ve looked him in the eye, and he, me. And when he runs, i don’t follow. End of story. Life with dissonance.
i never imagined you a trembling fawn.
—
The mower sputters back toward the garage. i feel the slowing—the knowledge that no matter how hard i push the pedal, i can never surmount the genetic friction piled against me, can never become anything more than you.
You’re not that bad. i understand you. We’re only human. You could get help.
Will you?
i finish the lawn and hate how it looks. i am never satisfied because you are never satisfied. And it will only grow back.
Should we tear it out at the root because it requires work to maintain?
There is resistance, even to love, and i am too scared to cherish what may fade, to throw baseball after baseball into that steel trap, to let them collect, rot.
What would happen to the grass if we just let it grow?
—
i walk inside to tell Mom i’ve finished. She’s staring out the kitchen window, far past the edge of our back lawn. There’s a V of geese pinwheeling over the woods behind our house, screeching a ruckus that our windows can’t keep out.
Againagainagainagain.
i start to speak, but she doesn’t turn. i stand beside her, watching the mass of wings contort across the sky. In the growing wind, they spell a different letter, then two, then three—we never realized they were such proficient calligraphers. The mower engine still echoes in my ears.
“I don’t know how they do it,” she tells me, and she means flying. She always means flying.