The boys love ball and hoop anytime, anywhere, stare at scores and have dunk contests with the little hoop on the door. The boys leap & loop and break themselves and bounce back. The door hoop has been Shaqqed to death four times, but they have to do an hour of chores to earn a new one after cracking a backboard. The boys love ball, more I think than they love me but not my wife, which is okay, I get it, ball is life and they love it and so do I. Life comes and goes in so many ways and 

a teardrop falls and celebrates.

The boys love ball but I kick them outside to play on the real hoop, the one we put in a year before the world flipped and the neighbor slipped and screamed at our boys. “Stop your stupid dribbling!” she shouted, and our youngest hid under his bed for three days but emerged to say, “I’m worried about her” and “Is she inside right now?” and when I said yes, “Can we go play?” The boys looked through the fence for a year and played every time she was inside. Can’t stop, won’t stop, 

snap your wrist and the shot’ll drop.

The basketballs they love are orange like embers until they wear off an epidermis, the ball’s bladder showing through black as an adder. They bank it in with a hiss. The boys love a new ball and another and another. Our mothers ask, “What do they want for Christmas?” and all we can say is, “Probably a new ball and maybe another.” The boys love ball and their grandmothers. They play against each other but rarely finish for the screaming. The passion so deep, they live in a dreamland 

where every shot’s a buzzer beater and

loss is not an option in their minds. Layup lines can work miracles, make muscles automatic. The boys move to shake off the day’s static, they move until they unravel, they move until the sweat dries and the day cries and after dinner they want more, but it’s time for math sheets & spelling tests. The boys love ball, 

but the rest is silence. 
Today in late January they stepped into the gym again for the first time since they lost it like a friend who moved away without warning. No snow until today, a Michigan that was only gray then finally these fat flakes and one hit my eye and I was blind. We were running late, but I let it melt, drip out like a tear, before I got behind the wheel and took us all back into the gym’s cave full of hot, poisonous breath where the squeaks are EKGs to monitor 
whether or not 
our heartbeats 
have even made 
it this far. 

MITCHELL NOBIS is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has appeared in Whale Road Review, Variant Literature, Words & Sports Quarterly, and others. He facilitates Teachers as Poets for the National Writing Project and hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis or mitchnobis.com or wincing in pain on a basketball court.