Gym Floor Gleaming, With Sweat

Irregular thumps of a dribbled basketball
parenthesized by conversational grunts
and gutturals in a foreign sounding
adolescent language
give punctuation to the dialogue
of the one on one game.
She’s a year older but shorter than he is,
lighter hair pulled back so
there’s more sweat on her face
than his neck that wets the t-shirt down his back.
They’ve owned the gym since they could walk out
along the bleachers to watch older sibs play.
The shoe squeaks are part of the discourse,
a way of changing the key of the conversation,
themes repeated with variations
echoes from one side wall to the other giving depth
as she pauses to wipe the sweat from her upper lip
with her shirt collar, again.
Sentences are rarely completed as rules
get bent or broken, called or ignored,
she wipes the sweat again but this time
she bites the t-shirt collar,
grinning.
They’ve both known for years
that this is life,
this is meaning.

Rosemary Moeller