I am the dumbbell, Erika is the trainer. She’s joined me on my back patio the past six years, though I’ve never met her. I have taken her to Athens, Chicago, Ogallala, Champagne, Iowa City, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Breckenridge, Columbus, Brooklyn, etc. I drove my dumbbells to Kansas City for AWP and Erika met me for weight training in the rental’s backyard. She pushed me from the screen. I looked insane.

You put the work in and the body gives back. Gone: back pain, strain, aches, self-pity, news cycles, scrolling, domestic drama, parental fears. The body longs for pressure. It bleeds sweat while robins nest in the crabapple, mosquitos orbit an aura of Deet. Erika presses. The squirrels think I’m insane.

I’ll never look beautiful. And neither will my mind tone like the proverbial winners of the world. But I found weights, found the space this body occupies. I’ve been a slow boy in gym class, holding back barf on the running track. I’ve been the boy too sore to sit up. Passed over by the genetically blessed. That boy is we. We pick up the dumbbells and clean and press, we squat and snatch what’s ours.