I sprained my ankle on the opening play of the homecoming game and kept playing because it was the first time we won in three years and coach said nobody wants to kiss a loser. My foot has swollen to the point it barely fits in my dress shoe and the metaphor is obvious from there. The next week I will tear my groin and refuse to tell anybody because we’re playing DeLasalle and I hate them for thinking they’re Blacker than me. But tonight, Paper Planes sends gunshots into the dusty rafters that make up a sky, and it’s true, all I want to do is take your money. And I did. If my family has a trade, this is it: The sacrifice of the body, the swallowing of coins in order to enter what is sacred and make it briefly ours. The swelling of my foot presses its urgency against the scaffold of my Dad’s best shoes and this means I cannot dance without also writhing in agony. I lean against the wall where it is least soaked, play the radius, watch the crowd sway on the one and the three in this sweaty gym. Desire looks really ridiculous from this angle.

I become a stag, transfiguration worthy only of myths that actually explain nothing. Stag means the lonely beast, his lonelier crowns a rough velvet aspiring to rule like good forests do. Something near my face makes me intraversible. King of the hum between antlers, the breeze waltzes through my tangled scalp and is nobody’s bride. Vaseline buffed my palms to a dull shine. In that moment and ever since I loved that school as much as anything that has played a part in my dying. I don’t know if I found out I was an exile before or after most of us, I don’t what anomaly I belong to. I know that there is a distance from the sun where everything is a wick, I played the radius in a years long winter, and briefly, was warm.

PREGAME PRAYER WITH COMPLETE CITATIONS

Our Father who art in Heaven1

Hallowed be thy name2

Thy Kingdom Come3

Thy will be done4

On Earth as it is in Heaven5

Give us this day6

Our daily bread7

And forgive us our trespasses8

As we forgive those who trespass against us9

And lead us not into temptation10

But deliver us from evil11

For thine is the kingdom12

The power13

The glory14

Amen15

1. My own father will miss pregame in the act of being a Good Son, of calling my grandmother who will accuse him of being a thief. For this small, repeated trespass, I briefly hate her. I ask you, bless his throat; that I might hear him as I cleave a boy loose from what he holds precious.

2. May the crowd have cause to say my name, may they find no humor in its mispronunciation, no confusion in its simple weight.