after the 2016 Packers-Cardinals loss
I never cheer until the end is practically
shaking my hand.
You could say I keep my joy
in a locked drawer,
the key hidden under a pile of unpaid bills.
Games turn.
The gods are fickle,
and fortune - if she has ears -
leans toward the sound of falling.
That night in January, the sky
was a sheet of ice over the town.
Rodgers threw one of those passes
you’d swear came from another century.
Janis caught it,
and for a second,
I thought I could hear the angels
warming up their trumpets.
But I stayed in my chair,
hands folded like I was at a funeral.
Victory, I have learned,
is a deer -
and you don’t start clapping in the forest.
Then my sister,
fastest thumbs in the Northeast,
sent me a text: They’ve done it! What a win!
As if the gods were standing there,
wondering what to take from us next.
And they took it.
The coin flip landed like an insult.
The crowd froze into its jackets.
And Fitzgerald,
with the kind of speed that makes you want
to change your life,
ran through us like we were only an idea.
I didn’t throw the remote,
though the thought passed through me.
I just sat there watching red
erase green.
In my chest, I knew -
she’d jinxed it.
For weeks, I didn’t speak of it.
This wasn’t about football anymore.
This was about the ancient laws of love,
the kind written in invisible ink.
Years later I told her.
We laughed until the neighbors
probably had questions.
She said she knew the instant
her thumb hit send.
She promised never to jinx again.
I promised nothing.
Some things in you just freeze over.
Some rules you keep
because breaking them would be like
calling your mother by her first name.
So next season,
I’ll sit in my quiet chair,
not counting points,
not even breathing too loudly,
my joy still locked away -
the deer safe,
for now.
GBS
2018
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