Suni Lee would have nothing
on me had I fit into a leotard—
a spark of raisin pirouetting across the sky.

Physics couldn’t even stop me.
Parkour!
Yurchenko, back

-flip, handspring, somersault?
(That’s all my vocab
for this sporting activity)

Picture me: plush,
gilding my nation
in spandex, just all

-around a medical mystery—
It’s madness. Cough it up.
Can’t tuck a karotype.

Block her.
Quantify blood
drawn, marrow gone.

Lose mass.
Minimize. Atrophy.
The logic doesn’t track—

Don’t I throw like a girl?

—called to alternate,
Sunisa rises. Tokyo spins
beneath as she descends

in the Twin Cities.
Kids ricochet wall-to-wall,
certain they, too, can eclipse

precedent ‘til they exhaust
all first-ever’s that’ll ever be.
Can’t keep score but I follow

iconic: milk mustache, Gatorade
glow, Dancing With The Stars
when work or body slows.

There’s a time limit:
a threshold few cross—
Indulge me. If I made

a good mascot to cheer
on until the finish line,
would you hold your breath

if I was better? if I deprived Brooke
of her ninth place,
if I shattered records

& stayed unbreakable,
if I won for sport
& was never hunted for it,

if I outsped,

outswam,

outlived—

I am no sun above.
I’m a girl
in awe of another

disproving gravity.
If I could’ve been,
I would have.

But I wasn’t,
so I’m not.
If a girl wants,

she should sweep. Upset. Ribbon
against gore & gaze.
Get cocky,

consequential.
Outclass the cheap tactics
of boys who aim

to ambush, expunge, predate—
When the pride comes
to mount us like doe,

play dead.
Cheat the trap.
Reverse the chase.

Poach the egg.
Chalk the airtime
left behind.

Oh dear.
Don’t twist it.
I’m not the game.