strike

by Jonathan Jackson

We don’t take turns. We post our sobriety chips: Shiny, nickel maybe, or silver. Day forty-seven, or thirty-two, or three hundred and four. We watch the hearts pulse steady on the screen. 67 per minute.

We share the miscarriage. Third paragraph for the reveal—careful study of the analytics. We count prayer-hands emojis, watch our pain trend upward, and see our wounds be rewarded with reach.

We know the metrics of grief. Dead parent posts peak at 2:47 AM. Breakup stories pull best on Sunday evenings when the loneliness is fresh. Private confessions needed the right ratio: three parts struggle, one part breakthrough, garnish with resilience. We learn to read the ebb and flow of the algorithm like tide charts, adjusting our position, perfecting our stillness, waiting for the strike.

We know just how much joy before it becomes saccharine. To post the kids getting ready for the fishing trip: Get a still shot in their oversized life vests(brand label visible). Angle the camera up—keep the floor out of frame. Someone knocked over spaghetti last night; sauce is still splattered on the floor, little bits marching up the wall. We will get to that later. Or not. A carefully curated carousel: our lives cropped to fit perfectly in the short succession of squares.

One photo on the shore. Sunshine smiles and bright innocent eyes. Another with our smallest holding a bobber the size of their hand. A video capturing the evening breeze, gentle audio. Nature's ASMR. Our oldest threatens to puke—we edit that out. Finally: one perfect family us-ie, holding up our trophy with the hook still in its mouth.

Kevin moved west. Portland, said it like it was a cure. Our group chat went quiet, migrated to Instagram where we publicly performed our friendship. The double tap of the screen, now a hug, the dopamine inducing ping of notifications reminding us we mattered.

Then: Tuesday, his appendix burst. Real-time updates from the gurney, the OR prep, the fading countdown. Metrics went vertical. We sat in our apartments, watching the vitals trend alongside his engagement rate, and then as the only one that mattered, diverged. The numbers danced. Heart rate, shares, oxygen levels, comments. He was dying beautifully.

“Praying for you” One of us typed; we were heating leftovers.

"With you in spirit," Another commented, snugly settled into the fresh doom scroll between episodes of something recommended to us by the television and again on our feed. The conversation between them was growing uncanny as they each courted us, got to know what we did and didn’t like, and talked about us behind our backs.

We watched strangers flood his comments with the kind of raw recognition we'd forgotten required no strategy. Love became a thing we did with thumbs. Kevin would be forever suspended at the exact depth where suffering remained visible, consumable, profitable. We wanted that.

We cast our lines into the feed. Content, content, content—bobbing on the surface, waiting for the strike. There is no bottom. We watch the numbers. Heart rate climbing. Engagement surging. We taste metal. Could be the blood, could be the hook. Doesn’t really matter though, does it? We keep smiling. Someone's watching. We're dying beautifully.

Photo of Jonathan Jackson

BIO: onathan Jackson is a native of Youngstown, Ohio. He is a recipient of a 2025 Gotham Writers Workshop Creative Writing Scholarship, as well as a Literary Support Award from The Boston Writers of Color(Grub Street). Jackson’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Blavity. His fiction has appeared in Blood + Honey. A poet and songwriter, Jackson studied Music Business at Columbia College Chicago. In 2021 Jackson began teaching Creative Writing with Community Works, an arts enrichment nonprofit in New Orleans, where he now serves as Program Engagement Manager. Jackson is currently working on his debut novel. Connect on IG: @_jonnnyj