sun to me

One

I'm in a foreign state 

My thoughts they slip away

My words are leaving me

They caught an aeroplance

Because I thought of you 

Just for the thought of you 

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Florence grew up in the shadow of greatness—though she often felt like she was standing outside it, watching from the sidelines. Geno was one of the best basketball coaches the sport had ever seen, a legend in his own right, and their home was often filled with the buzz of game strategy and the camaraderie of champions. Players who had gone on to become household names would stop by for dinner, sharing stories of hard-fought victories and buzzer-beater shots. Florence listened to it all with quiet fascination but never felt like she belonged in that world.

From an early age, it was clear that Florence was different. Her lanky frame didn't take to sports the way her father had hoped. Geno, ever the optimist, had tried everything—tossing her mini basketballs in the driveway when she was three, signing her up for youth soccer at six, and even sneaking her onto the gym floor during UConn practices. I mean who else can say Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi babysat them.

But Florence had two left feet, and worse, no interest. Dribbling felt awkward, running wind sprints was torture, and the one time she attempted a layup, she accidentally hit one of Geno's star players in the head. The memory still made her cringe.

"Dad, I love you," she told him one evening when he suggested yet another basketball clinic. "But I think I'll leave the hoop dreams to you."

Geno, to his credit, took it in stride. "Fine," he said with a chuckle. "But this doesn't get you out of watching the games and stoping by at practice"

And as much as she was bad at sports she was truly talented at the arts.

It started with a piano. Kathy had found an old upright on sale at a thrift store when Florence was eight and couldn't resist. It was chipped and out of tune, but to Florence, it was magic. She spent hours pressing the keys, figuring out melodies by ear. Soon after, she discovered her voice—soft at first, like the tentative whistle of wind through trees. But as the years passed, her voice grew stronger, richer, filled with the kind of emotion that could make a room fall silent.

By the time she was in high school, Florence's love for music had blossomed into something undeniable. She wrote her own songs in the quiet of her room, to shy to ever post them. She knew it killed her dad that she wasn't into sports and her mom that she liked to be alone. But it was in her own room she felt most at peace, being creative and singing.

It wasn't always easy, being the daughter of Geno, surrounded by athletic giants who couldn't quite understand her world. At family gatherings, someone always asked, "So, Florence, when are you going to start playing basketball like your dad?" It didn't matter how many times she politely explained that she preferred the arts. The expectation lingered like an uninvited guest.

Even Geno struggled with it at times. "I don't get it," he admitted one evening as he and Kathy watched Florence retreat back to her room after dinner. "How can she be surrounded by some of the greatest athletes in the world and not have a single competitive bone in her body?"

Kathy smiled knowingly. "She's competitive, Geno. Just not in your way. She's chasing something bigger than trophies."

And she was. By her senior year, Florence finally had the guts to perform a song at her school's end-of-the-year concert. Well sort of, her friend had put her name down weeks prior to perform and by the time Florence found out it was too late to back down. The night of the performance, she didn't tell her family that she was performing, as her dad had a game that night and she didn't want to bother her mom as she knew that she didn't like driving in the dark.

So there Florence was on stage performing an original song, She sang with a passion that brought tears to people's eyes. But it wouldn't be the end of her singing, her friend had recorded her singing and decided to post it online. By the next day, the video had gone viral and news articles were trying to reach out for interviews. But it wasn't Florence who found the viral video it was Geno. Well, Geno's players showed him the clip of his daughter singing and the 8k views, and for the first time, Geno truly understood. His daughter wasn't meant to play under the lights of a basketball court—she was meant to shine in her own way.