Sunday Soccer
My breath fogs the window as I press my forehead to the glass,
The car's steady trek across town vibrates against my skin.
It's a rare time when the morning is all darkness,
Streets lamps of yellow light sweeping across my closed eyelids as we whizz on by.
No one's talking, just the buzz of talk radio humming in the background,
A counterpart to the deep inhales and exhale of my lungs.
I don't get nervous before a game, but butterflies still take wing in my stomach cavity.
Excitement, and the thrill of upcoming battle with ball and goal rising.
My goalie gloves tight around my wrists, bracing my fingers,
One shin guard always tugging downward after a clash of titans in my goal box.
My skin flushed, and hair flying,
Play moves on, and I move with it,
Shuffling to the side, knees bent, hands out wide to the sides,
Cutting down the angle, charging forward into a dive, throwing myself parallel to the ground
Reaching, reaching, reaching for the ball.
Curling it into your body as warriors come in close hoping for a mistake,
Protecting it, before jumping up to send it forward
With a prayer not to have to meet again.
My mother's minivan pulls into the parking lot,
And visions of battles gone past and those ahead vanish.
I step out onto the asphalt, and my cleats feel strange clicking across the pavement,
Rather than digging into the sod.
My fellow warriors, my friends, my team
Arrive slowly as I trek toward the field in silence,
My ball is solid against my foot, leaving a visible wake in the waving grass
Through the morning dew as the sunrises through a veil of trees.
My socks get soaked, but I don't worry.
They'll dry as I begin to jog, my muscles warming to the practiced motions.
I'm the first one to step across the chalk line.
The first to sprint toward the goal, and the first to score with a satisfying thrust.
Soon it will be me in between the goalposts, protecting, defending, observing.
But for now, I line up my sights, take aim, and kick.
The sound of the ball hitting the net is the sound of victory for this one small moment
Rather than the stab of defeat, it will be later.
For a moment, I'm alone,
No pressure, no eyes, no mistakes,
For a moment I am free.
YOU ARE READING
Of Books and Angel Wings
PoetryThese words were written in anger and in sadness and in love. A collection of odds and ends poems who didn't have a home, but now they do. Mariah M. Gilmore Poetry Collection. All rights belong to me.
