Day: August 8, 2026

It’s all in the exhale.

Focus on the space. Think yourself through it. Pick a position just a few inches off the real and lock in on it. Then you clise your eyes and exhale. You’re there now with that whisk of air pushing out all around you for the briefest instant before the atmosphere replaces itself and you’re sucking that new space in. That’s how mom taught me to jump. It’s the best way I know. Not the only way. My dad tried to teach me a different version, but he’s not like us. Not yet. He’s Rookmen–another one of those stupid orders derivative of the Paladins who are basically angry about us having what they don’t. The Rookmen don’t pin their dislike on God or act like its a power that nobody should have. They’ve taken the shepherd’s approach to things.

Dad says jumping is less about focus than it is instinct. He likes to play this game he calls ‘Leapfrog’ In essence its catch, but the idea is that I go where he throws and bounce back to him with the ball. By the time I hit there’s another ball already in the air and I have to get that one, and so on. We’re up to three balls already. Mom hates the game. She refuses to play it. She says it will wear me out. He thinks that one day the Rookmen’s work will be at an end and we will be public news and that the only way things go well for us in a world like this is if there is some kind of sport attached to what we can do. I don’t know about any of it, but I do know I can jump more frequently than anyone I know, and I know a lot of Jumpers.

Some Thoughts:

1. Another freewrite which is a bit of fanfiction. I was thinking about Jumper and couldn’t stop… so I wrote.

“Sheeee-it” Poppa said. He never cursed like a normal person. He turned it into an event. This time the event had his hands high in the air like police where telling him what was what. He brought them down slow, waving off my proclamation as if I’d said the dumbest possible thing in the world.

“I’m serious, Poppa. I’m going to college.”

“And who is paying? You? That Costco job got you right like that and now you want to be Professor Alexander?”

“The job is going to help me cover my room and board. The rest is a scholarship.”

“Who gave you a scholarship? You ain’t even that good at math.”

I sighed. It wasn’t worth it getting mad at him. People are who they are, and Poppa is a man who believes in things being a particular way. “It isn’t for math.”

“Ain’t for ball neither. You can’t dribble, can’t catch, can’t do much of anything athletic with those big ass glasses on your face like that. You know you get that from your momma’s side don’t you?”

Anger died in me a long time ago. At 17 years old all I had left inside was exasperation.

Some Thoughts:

1. Did it. Wasn’t peak, but it is a start.