Sometimes I believe in something like karma,
or not that, exactly, but the idea that if bad
occurs to me, I probably deserve it, like the skinned
knee I received after a jog—in my apartment
complex, looking at my phone, I missed a step
I’d walked down a hundred times. Or, the emails
from a group of Boise soccer parents who want
me to show up at every game—It’s very important.
I don’t want to tell them I’m not their Todd Osborne,
just an impostor with a new Comcast account.
For all the emails or text messages unreplied,
the conversations left unstarted, this is my penance:
find me sitting in bleachers 2000 miles from my home,
sweating in bright blue, praying that this is enough.
