From the bleachers I watched them
watch you (multiplying, it seemed)
running sprints in heat
across the grass,
standing in for X's and O's.
I remember the rabbits
behind the fence, how they lived
fully inside their bodies—
sleek and muscular, spasming
like a football player's thigh
pinned to the goal post.
Grown men wearing leggings, I said,
driving you to practice.
It was hot and you hated me
for what I said.
Out the car's back window
summer threw its mango syntax
through the trees.
You were a boy
ridden with rhetorical questions.
You gripped your helmet against
your stomach, becoming
the metaphor you could not say.
