'Yo-Yo Dreaming' by Will Musgrove

The man fell asleep in his recliner watching television, and a commercial for a yo-yo seeped into his dream. Like a boomerang tied to a string, this yo-yo always came back no matter how you chucked it. At first, he was a kid again, yo-yoing the yo-yo. He walked the dog and went around the world, tricks he couldn’t do back when yo-yo tricks were cool, back when they meant something. Then he and the yo-yo switched roles. The yo-yo now yo-yoed him. The yo-yo hurled the man’s middle-aged self, his current self, downward, upward, every which way. Once the string tied around his waist straightened, he’d zoom backward toward the yo-yo, rewound. A school assembly of yo-yo students sitting in metal folding chairs yo-yoing people of their own formed around the man and the yo-yo, who was now performing on a stage. The man walked the dog and went around the world—except now he was the trick. As the yo-yo students cheered and clapped, the yo-yo flung him around, and he wished just once, he only needed once, his string would snap, sending him soaring to parts unknown. The commercial only lasted thirty seconds. In the man’s dream, it felt like a lifetime. When he woke up, he shut off the television and went to bed. He had work in the morning.