2021

Drop the ball!

They’re yelling.

Drop the ball!

It’s getting louder.

The court spins around you,

players rush to pummel you,

soft green earth rises up to meet your body as you tumble spinning.

The sky grows dark, black streaked with shimmers of glitter,

of flashing lights blinding your eyes and numbers blinking into your retinas.

It’s not a game you realize, it’s your life.

Suddenly, the world is careening into motion.

They’re counting seconds,

getting smaller and smaller,

shouting into the abyss of the world,

waiting for the one magic moment when everything will be different.

But it never feels different.

Every year is the same hoopla and commotion;

grand plans becoming empty platitudes by February’s end.

The only difference this year is everyone’s desperate to believe

the single moment of twelve-zero-zero can change everything.

They’re ready for the universe to literally drop the ball,

letting everything they don’t like from the past year

shatter in a million directions.

But you’re taking a different path to score,

weaving through running bodies,

through chaos.

You’re running towards the ball.

It’s heavy.

Stronger than anything you’ve ever held matches with,

and you know,

you could give it the chance to break you down.

Yet you don’t.

Because it’s your life.

It’s not a game to waste playing around.

You’ve learned that days are short, and every person

is only gifted with a few precious moments.

They’re far too fleeting to spend waiting 

for perfection,

for optimal conditions,

for the winning score.

Games are tough,

but you are tougher.

Life is tough,

but that’s what makes it a challenge.

You’re not on earth to preserve the score,

to get ran over and flattened by the wears of a game.

You’re here and alive

to push,

to wrestle,

to seize the ball,

because you have somewhere to go and somewhere to be,

people to touch and a person to be.

~