August 3, 2021

what now?

In a Tokyo gymnasium, amid the din of clicking shutters, the famous athlete,
poised for stratospheric stardom, turns her ear to another call: Enough,
and the Cyclopean eyes of the world are stunned into silence, the sponsors
left thrashing in their boardrooms as their prize comet swivels behind a blind corner.
What now? we ask ourselves, breathless, as we remember our old contortions
favored out of guilt, the way we twisted the dread in, bitter as cinnamon, as our mouths
cracked into the lie of a smile. Suddenly, we want to take it all back, every yes
that meant its opposite, each freedom we refused out of fear we would be emptied.
Still, we keep looking at the gymnast, waiting for the smack of chalk dust between palms.
She stares back, What now? as if daring our hands to stop moving.