TIMBER — KELSEY ENGLERT
/I spend Saturday morning alone on the sofa watching failed trust fall compilations on YouTube. One rigid body after another timbers to outstretched arms. Most begin okay, but there are so many ways to fail. After an hour, the productivity app on my phone locks me out. I override it and browse Facebook.
At the supermarket, I see my therapist. She retired two months ago. At our final session, I joked that it must have meant that I was fixed and wondered aloud if she would enjoy retirement with all of our problems in her head. She said she would. She booked a European riverboat tour. I pictured her on the Rhine wearing sunglasses and scarf while explaining to a balding tourist with binoculars around his neck what cognitive dissonance might have to do with his preoccupation with the barista and suggesting that he try intention logs or self-love diaries. But she is in the deli aisle in a hard cast balancing on crutches while ordering two pounds of thinly-sliced honey ham. She tries to avoid eye contact. I approach her anyway in case I can get a free mini session. “Wait. How did I get to Europe?” I ask. She laughs and explains that she broke her leg at CrossFit a week before her trip. Fortunately, her travel insurance refunded her. I have never heard of travel insurance. I do not understand how some people know all of the ways to win.
This woman knows that my boss put his hands on me, but the HR department is one person, and he is my ex and hates me because I cheated a little when I thought he was, too. She knows that I can never find the right balance between humor and sincerity on my online dating profile and that I honestly never considered that the hot dog detail would be taken as sexual innuendo and that watching the news in these (fill-in-the-blank) times turns my neck blotchy and makes me call in sick to work. I need her to know that I saw my neighbor mow her lawn in a perfect spiral until she got stuck in the center, and I can’t stop thinking about it. My ex-therapist holds the ham and fumbles a crutch while I joke about trust falls, but I need her to open her arms again. They are essential.
Kelsey Englert’s writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Passages North, Jellyfish Review, The Citron Review, and Gone Lawn, among other literary magazines. She is a Pennsylvania native and earned her M.A. in English from Ball State University and M.F.A. in creative writing from West Virginia University. She teaches at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. For more information, visit www.kelseyenglert.com.
