Put the weight on your back in the exact place so that your trapezeouses take on most of the weight, sparing your spine. You might not know if you were a few millimeters off, putting most of the weight on that delicate backbone, and you might not realize until mistrust, when it’s too late. Keep your feet just outside the shoulders, no more of a less. Push your hips back, do not bend over, until your knees and thighs are parallel. Change your breath from inhale to exhale that exact moment. Thrust until your hips are ever so slightly forward. One. Two. Three. That count can be reps, or it can be years. You did three plates, 315lbs at 14. A prodigy, if you maybe worked harder. Four plates, 405lbs, at 15. Peaking at 475lbs at 20, then not really caring and getting hurt. Steroid accusations and shade from the upperclassmen you surpassed. Splitting your eyelid powercleaning 175s., eleven stiches, but no loss of eyesight. Thrusting your own weight means thrusting a lot. Thrusting because of how it affects your body, not just by changing it, but putting it in proximity with other thrusting bodies. Thrusting because no weight on a bar feels heavier lonesomeness in your abdomen, and you think thrusting will be what helps you

_________________break through to what you’ve always wanted—to be in a group of people that loved each other. It was not your sports team, it was not your job, it was not your kin, it was not thar other job, it was not writing, it was not that other, other job either. A large eye exhales as it opens crusted lids and follows me around like a brightly colored storm cloud or a running inside joke I’ve not been made aware of. I stretch my hips at least seven times a day. Big boys must always stretch their hips, Coach always says. It’s where your power comes from, and your edge. Lay down on your back facing the ceiling. There may be someone above with ready hands but usually there is not. Wrap your ring finger around the knurling of the bar. Hoist nothing that need be lifted with your elbows in. Grip strong enough earn calices. Don’t forget you have a core. Repeat ten times. Three times. You’ve never been able to thrust your own bodyweight with your arms, just your legs. Eight more times. Six more times. Four. Two. When you get your set, your eyes will be yours again. Embrace them and it will be easier. Keep doing this, and maybe you’ll start to look

___________________________________________________you should really be more approachable. Large building mass scares people. It’s not them, it’s you. When you thrust, the eye behind you squints and sometimes goes away. Some days are better than others. Thrusting makes you stop twitching your face, a disruptive tick you have because you’re so nervous and being seen like that. Thrust so you can live longer than your parents did. Tear and regrow your muscles the way life tore you down and forced you do the only thing you could do on an Earth with a sun. Much to be done and to come: the adventurer, the tumbleweed, the werewolf athlete squad, the infidel in green, the closet case, your boss, the man from far away, the tardy, tardy knight. Remember how you slept through your first earthquake? Smile more, smile when you thrust, so that you can smile in other painful moments. Your continents will become islands and buildings will crumple all while new mountains appear and form, matter from below will erupt onto the surface, order restored from chaos. All your hopes, praters, wishes, and bargains. Thrusting until there’s nothing. Until you—until you have nothing. Nothing left to give.