He had always been flexible. A little runt of a kid he had been, that he could dimly remember. Small and wiry and pliant, some give to his bones, but strong and fast. Tough. A born runner, one of his gym teachers had said, in that offhanded way that sticks with you. But that hadn't been his sport. Oh, of course he had run. At practice, who didn’t? But it had always been wrestling, only been wrestling for him, and from such a young age. His big brother, he would say, when he spoke about him, had never got him pinned, despite being so much bigger, always half a foot of height on him, always ten pounds on him or more, but never so strong or so cunning he couldn't find a gap in the mess to fit his way out of. He always found the room. And if the rest of the team had been halfway as decent as his brother, or as little pains to be around, maybe that would have been the difference, maybe he would have kept doing it as an upperclassman, kept in shape, avoided all this now, he thought. If he'd stayed with the stretching routine, what coach called sun salutes every start of practice, never the exact terms, goddamn religious school, afraid to call it yoga, as if it was devil worship. But he hadn't done that. He hadn't done anything. One time he missed practice, and the next time too. And now, how many years later was it, twenty or twenty five, happier to guess, he had gone to crack his lower back, gone just a touch too far, to a point a hair away from pain. Agony abided like a red light poised to green. 

Maybe if he tried to twist the opposite way, he thought, that might put the universe back in order, but no. He wouldn't risk it. But, he thought, maybe that's my problem. Maybe that one right crack is waiting for me on that side, if I would only take the chance, if I would only have the guts. Coward, he thought, getting old, he thought, as a younger man, he thought. Maybe he would have been bolder before. Until now he'd been lucky, but luck, he knew, was always running out.

He would sit still, and not try anything rash, not until he was ready. He would be good. No, better yet. What if he were to reframe? It was a deal he’d make with himself. He would let all the pops and cracks and snaps and crunches build up within and among the small, pitifully overmatched bones of his lower back, later, in the safety of his bathroom, the garage bathroom, he'd shut the door and brace himself and let loose. A blowout. 

Good deal, he thought. 

The groan he let out when he twisted to that side he'd thought about all those hours ago, the delicious crinkle of all those tiny pockets of air escaping him, he felt it all the way down to the tip of his tailbone. He was sorry he was alone to hear it. He wished his wife were there. 

And then at the third to last position, what in high school they were forbidden from calling anything but a "forward bend," a crazy thought occurred to him. 

He took off his shorts. He returned to mountain pose. All the way up he reached, and as he bent down into the first forward bend, there was a lightness to his stomach, kind of a tingle in his lower back. He was almost painfully erect, such that when he went down into the plank, then into upward facing dog, he felt it pressing into his underbelly and pulsing with his heartbeat. And there it was when he went into downward facing dog, just as he had expected, as if staring at him, as if accusing him. He was loose, he thought. He was limber. He was in the best shape of his life. It equally frightened and thrilled him, as this half-formed notion found its way towards a single idea in his mind: by God, he thought, I bet I could do it. If I actually tried to, if I wanted to, I bet I could.