Two basketball courts, double rims. Stout water tower down the slope. Ball would bounce against the barbed wire on a miss, if it bounced enough. Yeah, here is good. I remember. And she’s been talking shit for weeks. That H.O.R.S.E. wouldn’t end my way, and she’s a shooter (she’s not). Two hand release, pushing off one leg, a half jump, land on one leg. Arched back. Line drives off the front rim, backboard, fence. It’s summer and sticky heat hangs from our shoulders, our fingertips, our lips. Humidity pulls my body and her body down into the concrete court, dragging into tree roots and acorns and scraggled grass, into the dirt of the earth. I want to eat your lips and swallow you whole and “you’re too far apart, standing all the way over there” “I’m right here.” “It’s too far.” She bricks another and laughs. Throws her arms up, pushes Spalding away, loose crop top rises up the sternum, to her collar bone. Flounces down quick, no breeze to hold it. Now I’m shirtless. Her replacement too long and worn. Heat smothering air, sunlight catching dust suspended on the court, lighting the Carolina pines, like a wall between us and everything else. We run and hide in the halflight. And if I knew then, what I knew later, I’d stay on that court forever. Puddle and melt into the cooked concrete, our arms around each other.
