Sara Hills: February 2025, First Prize

Like Dynamite

by Sara Hills

The time Ben and Mark jumped their BMX bikes off Pullman Street bridge; the time they jammed bricks in their pockets and tried to baptize themselves in Snake River; the time they shot BBs at each other’s bare calves and blotted the blood with their t-shirts; the time they huffed turpentine; the time they huffed rubber cement; the time they huffed Mark’s ma’s bleach and Ben’s ma’s oven cleaner and the hollow belly of an old gas can warmed in the sun; the time they compared their dads’ Sunday night beatings to their mas’ squalls of disappointment; the time they vowed they’d try harder to fit in; the time they swore they’d fuck Jenny Jamison if they got the chance; the time they each got the chance and chickened out; the time they joked they’d rather suck Jesus off the cross than even kiss a skank like Jenny Jamison; the time they snuck out of church after call to worship; the time they snuck out of church during Lord’s Prayer; the time they sprinted clean past the parking lot and on down Rutger Road in their Miami Vice jackets and Sunday ties and darted into the woods, pines gianting around them while Ben pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and his church tie from his neck and begged Mark to hold him down, eyes wide, Ben’s open mouth like a fish, pulsing against the plastic, thrashing, kicking up the sweet rot of earth and again, a perfect hum engining under their collective ribs, both of them hard as pylons, as bridge railings, lit like dynamite, their mouths fogging the taut plastic between them.