I Jump If You Jump
by C.J. Woods
It’s been like this our whole lives–trees and creeks and railroad tracks. Me, exactly fourteen months older, first to hit my growth spurt and get my first stubble, but you always the trailblazer. Even now, when I think about you, it’s always from behind, your blue eyes moon-bright, but if I’m the sun, all it means is we never quite meet. You the acrobat, the soldier, the risk-taker, and me always two steps behind, stumbling and scared, but I went where you went and that was that.
It’s funny, isn’t it–I know exactly what your eyes look like, and I mean exactly, down to the two flecks of brown in one iris, like if you gave me a canvas and some paints I could do them justice even though I can’t paint worth a damn, but when I think about you I never quite see your eyes. You’re a little tipsy, late at night, throwing your head back laughing, or you’re asleep in my room breathing in-out-in-out looking peaceful, like a little kid, or you’re speaking with your head dropped low, and I should’ve made you look at me, I should’ve, but I never did learn how to lead.
I don’t know what to do now–like, yeah, I visit your mom, and I bring her flowers, and I brush my teeth, and I walk around town, in circles like you’re gonna pop out from the big tree behind the schoolyard with that stupid smirk on your face and tell me where we’re going. I stopped drinking because it made me think of you, laughing with your head thrown back, the way the firelight stuck in your hair that one night and knocked the breath clean out of my chest. When I try to sleep I hear the sound of my own breathing in-out-in-out, and I think of you there on the floor looking peaceful like a little kid, and it keeps me up all night. Truth is, I don’t know what to do or where to go or how to talk or sleep or breathe anymore, without you there in front of me, blazing the trail, making fun of me for always playing catch-up.
That’s the thing; you jump, I jump, but when you jumped that last time, I missed it.
BIO
C.J. Woods is a Black writer who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago but is now based in the UK. They have been writing recreationally for over a decade, but are only just venturing into the world of published work.
WHY I WRITE
When I think about the question, “Why do you write?”, I think about a little girl who carried her asthma inhaler with her everywhere she went, who didn't run around with the other kids because she was afraid, whose idea of a good time was a quiet corner and any book she could get her hands on—most often a good story, but her brother's schoolbooks, her mother's psychology texts, a beautiful cookbook or a half-decent encyclopedia would also do the trick.
I think about a teenager who could tell she didn't quite get something that her peers already knew, but in stories, she could finally see it—what made people tick, how they related to each other, the secrets they kept and the truths they shared and the things that they never had to say out loud to be completely understood. She learned that there were other people like her—people who didn't quite get it, people who felt things ten times deeper than they knew how to say, people who were brave and brilliant and talented despite all of that—or maybe because of it.
I heard once that most shark attacks aren't motivated by aggression, or even hunger, but by curiosity. That most of the time, sharks just want to know what we are, but the only tool they have is a mouth.
In that way, I’m like a shark. I write because I want to understand, and the only tool I have is a pen.