CW // violence

Footsweep

And yet I crave the slippage of clavicle, the resurrected din of mandible jutting inside a wrecked fist. I’m a little hazy on the specifics of inquiry when it comes to a smoky chest, a billowing set of teeth strewn across the lawn. Of fatherhood, I must say there’s a certain set of circumstances that come bearing down at full tilt as soon as a slender digit slices open or a tight scream rumbles into the space between humbled breaths, a threaded submission in my throat. I find that it’s hardly worth the weight of knees. Against the onslaught of the memory, I contort my stomach into an imperfect array of armored plates, try and deflect or simply lay prone on the bluegrass, stare at the twisting vertebrae of stars. I admit, there’s a preponderance of indication that I might be misremembering this time out in the yard when my feet got taken out, my father’s arms sliding, his hands jeweled by moonlight – I should mention that I skipped the part where we’d been hammering back yowls of bourbon, throats kindled and spent roughing up the air in a storm of well-placed silence and a glaze of ethereal praise carried on a southern breeze – to the point that it was a blinding spin of perpetuity when they came down on my chest and chin. Pinned to the soil, I still writhe to the beat of pummeling hands, to the bobbing of an Adam’s apple taking a shot.

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Luke Wortley is a writer living in Indianapolis, IN. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Inch, Hobart, Best Microfictions, Pithead Chapel, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. You can follow him on Twitter (@LukeWortley) or visit https://www.lukewortley.com/