Baseball
by Quynn Kent with art by Olivia Stephens
(Writers Artists Night 2022)
“Hey Quynn.
It’s me.
I’m calling to say thank you.
Thank you for loving me,
For teaching me how to laugh,
For sitting in silence with me,
And for being everything I needed you to be.
Thank you.
And I’m sorry.”
“Hey Quynn.
I’m not doing well and I need someone to talk to.
Can you call me?”
“Hey Quynn.
Its like the game of baseball,
And I don’t want to play anymore.
Hell, I don’t even like baseball.”
“Hey Quynn,
I don’t know how it happened.
We got in a fight and there was the knife.
It just helps.”
“Hey Quynn,
oh, I must have gotten that from my bed post.
Its pretty sharp,
Can do a lot of harm,
I suppose?”
Each time these calls shattered me,
Left me crawling on the ground,
Unable to breath.
Folding me under the weight of them,
Drowning me as I couldn’t escape from them.
I remember calling,
Crying over the phone,
Screaming “PLEASE, NO!”
Only to be met with,
“I’m sorry, I just feel so alone.”
Each time,
Writhing in pain,
Saying “youre not alone,
Please stay on the phone.
Youre needed here, more than you will ever know,
Please don’t do it,
It will be worse if you go.”
I remember,
Wracking my brain,
Trying to figure out how to save them,
While the wracking pain I felt
Threatened to disarm and then deslave them.
Feeling so helpless,
Pacing in the cold,
Wondering,
How do I stop this and help them feel more at home?
More at home in their skin,
When I know their skin crawls,
At the at the sight of baseballs,
Or phone calls,
Or their childhood dolls,
Or life,
Because, hell, doesn’t baseball mean life?
Baseball isn’t baseball,
But it’s a game youre sucked into,
Without a say from the age of two,
Youre just forced in,
And don’t want to be there,
So, you quit playing.
It’s not fun.
You don’t want to be here.
I remember,
Calling their people,
Trying to fight while they just didn’t want to breathe no more.
Feeling that vortex inside,
Like embers or lava
Spinning inside,
a vortex that could blindside,
Trying to catch my breath,
So, theirs wouldn’t escape,
Willing to give my last,
That they might be willing to stay.
And I remember.
Each time I received this call,
It brought back a young girl in her stall,
With no one willing to fight,
No one she knew who would fall
At the sight of her laying on the kitchen floor,
Blood pooling,
Creeping toward the door.
A young girl,
Who just needed someone to listen,
But each time she tried
Her words seemed to cause division.
She just needed to be heard,
But instead she just hurt,
And the last thing she wanted was to hurt those around her,
So why stay if it just inhibited their laughter.
I remember,
screaming her name,
Dying for her to listen,
Because there was someone who needed her,
A team who couldn’t play without her.
I said
“I know you feel alone,
And that there is no one to pick up the phone.
I know you didn’t want to play,
And it was forced on you every day,
But PLEASE!
Youre needed here today!”
She fought me and pleaded,
Already defeated,
Ready to be done and wash herself of this game,
Sorry, I mean life,
Trying not to hear me call her name,
Or the pain in my fight.
She had the knife in her chest,
She had the death certificate pressed,
The blood began to pour,
As she tried not to hear the screams from me begging for more.
One more pitch,
One more bat,
One more breath,
One more spat.
Because,
Even in that,
She would be here and not there,
In her pool of blood,
On the kitchen floor.
The knife fell,
As she dropped to the ground,
Defeated and broken,
With no one around.
I remember,
Being there,
Talking her down,
Or screaming if you prefer,
Hearing the knife fall
Like the ringing of a lonesome call.
I remember,
Crying on the floor,
A single tear of blood dripping down my chest,
After knocking on deaths door,
And not knowing why I hadn’t just barged in.
But some one screamed my name,
And I emptyhandedly and broken came,
To discover,
The one throwing the pitch,
Waiting for me to catch,
The one who would fall,
At the sight of blood pooling after the call,
The one screaming my name,
Was called Quynn.
Not yet did I know her,
But somehow, she was happy.
And she was willing to fight,
So, was I willing to fight?
