It's Not Even Past
Photograph: Tom Darin Liskey
Sometimes I’m there again at the house, in the backyard, standing among the patchy hazel-colored grass more dirt than grass. I’m always back by the shed, studying the lawn chairs set up in concentric half-circles near the deck, clusters of rusted and bent Coleman grills, broken bike parts littered among the weeds. Takes me a minute, but then I see them, the neighbors: they’re gathering and talking, drinking from plastic cups and cans of lite beer between cackles and guffaws. There’s a cooler on the deck filled with fast-melting ice, bugs swarming the spilled pop dreaming of blood meals.
That’s when Caleb always comes out the slider dragging the old TV, cord wrapped up his forearm like a constricting black snake, hollering at everyone to take a seat—that the show’s about to get started.
“Sure,” I tell him. “Alright.”
We load the TV in and Caleb rigs it up while I survey the crowd: they’re pasty and cherry-faced and freckled, see more of myself in them than I’d care to. They talk amongst themselves wearing oversized tees and ill-fitting sundresses, lounging and whooping between labored breaths as the sky fires up orange-red in defense of the night.