My skeleton and I throw a baseball in my family’s backyard. My skeleton is stronger than me. It tosses the baseball too far, gets it stuck in the tree. In the garage, I grab the ladder and climb up the tree to retrieve the ball. A boat on the river passes by with hot dogs for sale. I grab the baseball from the top of the tree and throw it down to my skeleton. \u201cDon’t throw it so hard next time.\u201d My skeleton nods a false nod. Inside my house, my father sleeps alone on the love seat. He dreams about clouds, nosebleeds, and the only time we were all together in his car.<\/p>\n
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You invite me over to your home. It’s raining drain pipes. I knock on your door. It’s raining steak knives. Your wife answers the door. She says you’re out back. It’s raining cat furs. I run around the side of the house. You’re in the shed. I knock on the shed. It’s raining live Clydesdales. You open the shed and lower your shoulders. You’re wearing a welding mask and a hazmat suit. It’s raining roosters and hens. You say you’re too busy for company. I hear something growl within the border of your shadow. You slam the door closed. Your wife sees it all from the hallway window. She understands. It\u2019s raining tin cans. I turn around and head to my car. In the front doorway your wife holds a tray of cheesecake squares. I walk over and extend my hand but the squares dissolve before my reach arrives. Your wife smiles as her teeth sleep by the sink. It’s raining stained glass.<\/p>\n
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Benjamin Niespodziany has had work published in Fairy Tale Review, Paper Darts, Hobart<\/em>, and various others. He works in a library at the University of Chicago and runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas]<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Catch with Skeleton | You Invite Me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}