High School Jocks
by Sabrina Dawkins
A musty empty weight room,
a fog of stench suffocates air.
The warmth of sweat dripped
off bodies
now hangs in humid air.
Where have the bodies gone
that exerted till sweat wet the floor,
that stank and moaned and ached
for the body that could throw a ball?
They lifted weights for hours,
talking, laughing, voices going deep,
facial hair coming in
but they weren’t yet men.
You’d be fooled by hard lumps on arms,
definition of their pain
chiseled just under the flesh,
broad shoulders, head tilted back.
They were as confident as men,
but they weren’t yet.
They ran the fastest race,
scored the winning point,
lifted the heaviest weight,
but they weren’t yet men.
Where had those bodies gone?
I stand in an empty room.
Sweat still hugging the air,
a dream so sensory I felt I was there.
Out into the world, of course,
that’s where they went,
straight from the weight room,
straight from boyhood games,
to pretend to be men.