In Principio

Hold the racket higher if not your chin

Tattered jeans. Faded shirt. He drags himself towards the sparse patch with his splintered racket trailing closely behind, already exhausted from the long walk down. The harsh sun beats down on his dark curls, sweat glistening on his forehead and soaking up his thin shirt. The shirt that his mother had bought when she still had a job and got paid, when her hair hung with luster and purpose, when her eyes still crinkled around the corners and had some remnant of life left in them.

But that was a very long time ago; in fact, so long ago that it escapes his memory of her. It should upset him, but his only priority that has become since that day is the fraying ball and the frail racket, the cheap one he bought with a lucky ten dollar bill on the ground. His shoes scrape against the cracked pavement, their soles peeling off from rigorous overuse and little maintenance. He used to wear fancy white Adidas, but that was then. And this is now.

He reaches the rugged court,that he goes to every day after waiting tables at Darcy's Diner, the rundown joint for truckers and the usual crowd.

No one knows this place—his place—a secret kept from everyone, even his closest friends, to preserve the peace in his hidden corner of the universe. The place where he escapes when the music stops and the words dissolve, the portal to his land, where worries vanish and it's only him and the racket and the ball.