The Box of Unplayed Outcomes
When the field had become
a wet green argument
and the posts stood there
pretending innocence,
we found the box.
It was under the bench,
beside three orange peels,
a strip of ankle tape,
and the sort of meat pie
that makes a man reconsider
civilisation.
The label said:
SPECIAL BOX OF ABSURDITY
PROPERTY OF WHOEVER NOTICED
Which seemed enough.
A cat sat beside it.
White, mostly.
Mud on one paw.
Blue eyes.
The expression of a creature
who had seen the accounts
and found the species
badly overdrawn.
Inside the box
was a whistle,
a notebook,
a cracked mouthguard,
half a packet of water crackers,
and a business plan
written in four colours of pen.
The business plan was called:
PROBABILITY CRACKERS
Each cracker, it claimed,
would contain no fortune,
no lucky number,
no cheerful lie
folded by a machine
in a suburb with reasonable rent.
Only questions.
Would you have passed
if someone had trusted you?
Which version of yourself
is still waiting near the sideline,
boots clean,
heart stupid,
mouth full of weather?
The margins said:
MARKET OPPORTUNITY:
human beings are hungry
and frightened
and will pay retail
for anything that sounds
like permission.
The cat put one paw
on the notebook.
Several possible futures
became annoyed.
Was the try scored
in another branch?
Did the boy who dropped it
become a surgeon,
a coward,
or the sort of man
who says no worries
while quietly becoming
a ruined cathedral?
The rain thickened.
Parents folded chairs.
Children dragged bags.
Someone argued
about selection policy
with the desperate precision
of a man trying to fix death
through under thirteen rugby.
My daughter stood near halfway,
holding her boots
by the laces.
She had missed the last kick.
The ball had drifted right,
softly,
almost politely,
as if unwilling
to be blamed.
In the notebook,
a new line appeared.
Did she think
I was disappointed?
The cat looked at me.
This was unhelpful.
Which face did I wear
when the ball missed?
How long does a child
carry one expression home?
The crackers lay there
in their silver sleeve.
The pitch lights came on.
One by one,
each puddle accepted
a small broken moon.
The notebook turned a page
without wind.
Could tenderness scale?
The gross margin on wonder,
the notebook noted,
is excellent
until someone asks
what it costs.
The cat sneezed.
My daughter walked over.
She did not ask
about the box,
or the cat,
or the notebook
which was now humming
with the private electricity
of things not said.
She asked
if we could go home.
In the special box of absurdity,
the whistle rolled once
against the mouthguard.
Was the match finished?
Was the kick missed?
Was the father kind?
Was the child forgiven
for a mistake
nobody had charged her with?
The cat stepped off the page.
The writing vanished.
Only one question remained,
pressed into the paper
like grass after rain.
Who gets to decide
which life happened?
My daughter took a cracker.
She broke it in half.
There was no message inside.
The cat watched.
The lights flickered.
Somewhere behind us,
or ahead of us,
a whistle blew.
Nobody moved.
Then my daughter laughed,
small and sudden,
as if joy had slipped past security
with forged documents.
I picked up the box.
The field went on being a field.
The mud kept its records.
The cat followed us
to the car park
and refused, quite reasonably,
to explain anything.