top of page

The Collarbone

2023

CONTENT WARNING: Language

          Fact: the collarbone is the most disproportionately fragile bone in the human body.

            According to your kinesiology lecture, anyway, so you add it to the growing list of facts scrawled in your notebook. Facts you’ll never need again, not with the season you’re having. Which—shit—might be a good thing. Your handwriting’s always been bad, but this jumble of letters? Borderline illegible.

            Fuck it, it’s fine. This hand was made to hold an NFL football, not a goddamn number-two pencil.

            You let your eyes drift towards the window and watch highlights of last week’s rivalry game project themselves onto the clear blue of the October sky. God, is there anything better than this time of year? It’s another perfect day of football weather out there. With class barely half over, you’re already starting to fidget in your seat, tapping one toe, then the other, in the cadence of the three-step dropback you could be working on right now if it weren’t for—

            Shit.

            Your eyes dart back just in time to see 84 swipe your notebook off your desk. He’s your top tight end, your best friend, and convinced he’s goddamn hilarious. He’d be a lot funnier if he were this shifty on the field, you grumble to yourself as you reach for the notebook, only to have his big, clumsy hand swat yours away.

            But two kinesiology facts later, the notebook reappears on your desk, a crying Tony Romo in the margins and the word human crossed out, replaced in all caps by PUSSY. Fuck, maybe 84 is funny. You shake your head and stifle a laugh as you give him a shove. “Screw you, man,” you whisper. Fucking Eagles fans.

            “Like to see you try, 6,” he shoots back.

            Six. That’s who you’ve been for as long as you can remember, but it still lights something up inside you every time one of the guys calls you that. It’s not just your number, it’s what you’re good for every time you step on that field. Could be eight, if coach’d let you go for two more often. God, that was a perfect two-point play, the winner in triple overtime last year. Solid play call, brilliant audible. I mean, who fucking expects that from a wing-T formation?

            Shit, you’re drifting again. That Romo drawing is just about the most useful thing you’ve gotten out of today’s lecture. Gotta give 84 some credit. You might remember that goddamn collarbone fact.

~          ~          ~

            As much as you love those perfect fall afternoons, the nights are even better. Nights like tonight best of all. It’s a seven o’clock kick under the lights and you’re dialed in, ready to go. A shower of boos rains down from the enemy crowd as you race onto the field. You fling your arms wide, begging for more. More boos, more hate, more fuel for the fire burning brighter than ever within you on a night like tonight. Your undefeated record is on the line—and so is theirs. It’s the perfect recipe for a night of good, clean, hard-hitting hate.

            You feel the electricity in the air, even more so in your men as you huddle up for the first time amidst the roar of the crowd. Every single one of them is dialed in, ready to go. Even before you clap to break the huddle, you can feel that you’re about to make magic.

            Coach trusts you to take a shot on your first play from scrimmage, and fuck, it’s a beauty. Your receiver has a step on the defense and you’re signaling touchdown before he has a hold of the ball. On a night like this, you can’t be wrong.

            “Fuck yeah, 6!” your OC yells, giving you a slap on the helmet as you high-five your way back to the bench. You act like you don’t hear, but god, that glow. Every single time.

            You’re living up to it, too. Scores on every drive of the first half, and an almost comfortable lead headed into halftime.

            But you’re not done.

            The fire’s not done.

            Your opponent’s not done, either. They storm out of halftime firing on all cylinders, gashing your defense like no one has all season. The crowd roars back to life on the electric energy of their quick score, and you can feel the ground shaking as you reach for your helmet. Time to go shut them right back up.

            The first series after the half can be tricky, but not tonight. Not when everything is going your way. The opposing offense has kept you from running away with this one, but their defense has nothing on you. You haven’t so much as been pressured, much less hit or sacked. As you start to sling it again, everything feels loose. Strong. Fluid.

            Only three plays in, and their secondary is giving you another gift. 84 got lost in the shuffle and he’s running free down the sideline. This one’ll cost you, but you let the ball fly, and watch the spiral as the first real contact of the game drives you into the turf. Not on your throwing shoulder. Good. Your head shoots up. 84’s got it, but what you swore was a touchdown ends with him shoved out at the 30. Fuck, it was still a great play. You can live with that.

            You start to pick yourself up, but something feels off as you reach for your center’s extended hand. Nothing hurts, but your arm’s not listening to your brain. Or—shit—maybe something does hurt. It’s fine. Nothing you can’t play through. You force down the grimace and reach out your throwing arm instead.

            It’s the first time you’ve let one of your linemen yank you around by your golden arm, and a wrinkle of surprise registers in your center’s face as he, too, swaps hands.

            “You good, 6?”

            Of course you are. You’re 6, after all. You have the team driving, on the verge of opening up a lead that’s gotten a little too close for comfort… and just a twinge of pain in your non-throwing shoulder.

            A lurch and a grumble later, you’re on your feet, but it takes you an extra beat to orient yourself. The timeout has already been called, even before the trainer sees you wince as you reach for that shoulder, the unimportant one.

            “I’m fine,” you shout in the direction of the approaching trainer. You turn towards the huddle. C’mon, 6. Shake it off. Your arm is hanging pretty badly, but you force yourself to test out the shoulder, convince yourself it’s fine. See, it’s fine. It’s—

            Not fine. A bolt of pain knots your stomach. The trainer sees it in your face, in the split second before it drops you to your knees and all at once you’re surrounded, engulfed by the practiced calm of her polo-shirted army.

            “I’m fine,” you repeat, choking down the bile rising in the back of your throat, willing the latest wave of dizziness to release its chokehold. If you can just stand up, you’ll be fine.

            Your arm? Fuck. Still not fine.

            A helmet parts the sea of crew cuts and ponytails, and you dart a glance up at 84’s worried face. On a knee, he’s the same height as the rest of them, but somehow the only one who doesn’t feel like he’s looking down at you. He’s got his mouthguard turned sideways, and he’s chewing away on it, all nervous like he gets before kickoff. “Shit, man,” he mutters.

            “I’m fine,” you say again. 84’s the only one who hears you. Even your own ears are numb to that lie.

            “Fuckin’ better be, 6,” 84 mumbles through the mouthguard. He gives your helmet a tap, then he’s on his feet and out of there, jogging back over to a huddle that until two minutes ago belonged to you.

            The trainers get you on your feet, and you feel yourself sway with a new round of dizziness. If they’d just give you a little space, you’d be fine, you swear. But you’re penned in on all sides, propped up and guided to the sideline like an overgrown toddler who has to duck to fit into their flimsy little medical tent.

            Every second in that tent feels like hours. The game reaches you in snippets—muffled, muddled—but you can feel the downs slipping away from your backup. What did you expect? The kid’s a freshman, taking his first snaps outside of garbage time, and—fuck, that sounded like he just got sacked.

            Fourth down. Punt coming. You can’t afford too many punts in a game like this. You have to get back out there.

            Your arm is still hanging, and the trainer is still talking, suddenly as long-winded as that kinesiology professor. “I’m fine,” you say on repeat, but she’s shaking her head no, let’s go to the locker room. So, sandwiched between her and one of the other polo shirts, you do, muttering curses as your shoulder throbs and the cheers of a long punt return echo overhead.

~          ~          ~

            Something deep inside you already knew, but you refuse to believe it as the x-ray technician points to a faint black line marring the crisp white of your collarbone.

            It’s not true. You’re going back out there.

            You reach for the shoulder pads you had to be helped out of—for the first time since your peewee days—but the trainer places a hand on yours. “I’m sorry,” she says. You can tell what she’s saying, but it doesn’t fully hit you until she calls you by name. Your name.  Not 6, not the grass-stained jersey hanging off the end of the exam table.

            Because that’s not who you are anymore. It’s over.

            Your day.

            Possibly your season.

            Our season.

            This was our year.

            You feel it all slipping past, rushing away from you. It can’t be true. The hopes of a team, a school, a town, a self-proclaimed nation hundreds of thousands strong, long since carried on your shoulders, dashed in an instant.

            All by a quarter-inch crack in the most disproportionately fragile bone in the human body.

            That’s what you are, after all. Human. The most disproportionately fragile kind of hero.

~          ~          ~

            Everything inside of you tells you not to go, not to let them all see you like this. Your men, or the enemy, hard to say which is worse. But the first rule of football is don’t quit on your team, so instead of sulking in the echoey emptiness of the visitors’ locker room, you swallow as much pride and stomach acid as you can, and let yourself be trotted back out to the sideline.

            You hate this feeling more than you could have imagined. The competitive fire still burns inside of you, but now you’re choking on the smoke. You’re nothing but a spectator now, an imposter in street clothes who doesn’t belong on this sideline.

            It feels like a cruel joke, to be suspended in this moment and utterly powerless… but here you are. Over your tightening chest, your unimportant non-throwing arm hangs uselessly in a sling. Overhead on the slowly shifting scoreboard, your all-important senior season hangs in the balance. In the hands of a nervy freshman who—shit—just got sacked again.

            You drift listlessly down the sideline as the punter jogs onto the field for what already feels like the hundredth time. God, you hate this feeling. It can’t end like this.

            Not the game.

            Not the year.

            A stab of pain halts your motion, and you look up just in time to catch the eye of the opposing quarterback as he takes the field. He’s confident. Cocky. Still down by a score, but he knows the game is well within his grasp.

            Then he pauses, ever so slightly. You lock eyes, and watch as his confidence falters, displaced by… not quite sympathy, not an apology, no. By a moment of heart-stopping clarity as you and he suddenly, as one, can see this game for what it is.

            Two sides of a wishbone.

            Two bodies, two teams, two stadia’s worth of dreams, fused as one. Hoping, praying, desperate in anticipation of which side of that airy, delicate bone will crack.

            Tonight it’s you, but tomorrow it could be him. It could be any of us.

            Fact: the collarbone is the most disproportionately fragile bone in the human body.

            But who wouldn’t crack under the weight of all those hopes and dreams?

bottom of page