An elbow blade in my vision like the one true thing, then — a bright crackling, the wheeling world.
I wander off the basketball court, the pain rising and crinkling into stars. There are bits of garbled conversation, my own heaving breath. No blood that I can feel — but space, I need space, to be away from other bodies, to be alone in my own blood-heavy, throbbing body.
Slowly I take my hand away from my left eye, and everything — the court, the nine other men, their sweat pants and mesh shorts and reversible jerseys — slides, with a sick, liquid jerk, back into place.
