Wet Grass, Thornbush, You

One Tuesday night in April, the rain outside and the wine in my glass awaken memories of him—the brother I never had a grasp on; that black sheep, that dark horse, that wild bird; that violet sunset chariot rider, he who departed early. 

Two years younger than me, gone at twenty-four—and there is so much more biography I could share, so much more geography, but that’s not what comes to mind now (the facts and figures of it) and neither is it those epic ceremonial markers (the folded flags and fire trucks and winter bagpipes) but rather what surfaces now is something more fleshy: something like fingernails scratching at the underside of my chest; like teeth biting my bare shoulders; like rugburns, nosebleeds, and splinters. 

Something like reckless backyard games on autumn nights when the air was a deep burnt sienna and the grass smelled the way fall doesn’t anymore, games like one-on-one tackle football, games so fierce we sometimes ripped the shirts off each other; neither of us ever wanted to win another game more than we did those unhinged contests. 

Once, for some godforsaken reason, we placed a small exercise trampoline (six inches high, two feet in diameter) in the middle of the yard so that one man—on offense or defense—could use the trampoline to intercept or evade the other man. Honestly, I forget which of us had the ball when we ran toward each other like fiends, and we neared the trampoline, and someone, one of us, was going to use it and the other wasn’t and then we both got too close and no one had decided, no one had committed, and so we utterly plastered ourselves into one another, and our hands were down low so our faces cracked together entirely—THWOCK—front teeth to front teeth, and we both fell to the ground in agony, wind knocked out of us, and when breath finally returned all we could do was writhe and moan in pain, uselessly cupping our hands to our mouths. 

Two teenage idiots, shirtless in the yellow grass, bloody gums and lips and tongues, and it seemed like an hour passed on the ground before my skull stopped ringing like a Gothic church bell, and when I went to bed that night it still hurt to shut my mouth and have the top teeth touch the bottom teeth.  

This is what I remember, what I treasure, what I keep close—us racing, crashing together like orchestra cymbals, the kind of crash that gets a whole theater up on its feet. 

Rian Casey Cork is an artist, a writer, and the founder of The Gargoyle, a newsletter and podcast exploring themes of authenticity, creativity, and curiosity. 

This essay was originally published on The Gargoyle.