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The Sting, The Fear, The Faint Mirage

Ben Mitchell


It’s always better, safe behind the chain link fence,
hurling insults at the children in the spot-light.

To see a friend step up to the plate and clock
one deep into the stratosphere.

Of course to step up myself, well, that’s different.
Even the twelve-and-under fastball stings

like sidewalk pebbles, over the handle bars
of a speed-wobbling bicycle.

With everyone watching and screaming advice,
I try to step up confident and pray

for the failure of some kid, struggling to hurl a sphere
through an imaginary two foot box in space before me

knowing if I stay motionless I may reach base,
but where’s the honor in that?

Standing in the sun, I become a battle ground
for three conflicting instincts: the sting

of hardball leather, the fear of being
called a pussy by my friends, and the faint mirage

of immortality, the piercing crack of metal
against hardened layers of wound-up twine.

I watch him kick and hurl on his pile of dirt.
In the movies, time slows down.

It curves in slow so one could read the blue letters
between the red stitches.

But in this world, balls whiz past like terrified squirrels.
I close my eyes and swing with all I have, but

There is no ball, no chain-link fence,
only days that bleed indistinguishably together.

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