Fifteen games out by June and still
I insist on watching every inning
as if to prove devotion outlives discretion.

Do us both the favor and turn
the volume off, you say though I pretend
not to listen. Outside on Georgia Avenue,

street wet enough I can hear the reflections
through the wall, comes the sound of a car
passing—only the car never passes.

Never slows, never stops. Leaves only the sound
of going and going without receding.
How I have hung in your life, uneasy

in that strangest way: familiar. How our pitcher
on the TV, crested with the salt of defeat,
describes pretty much the worst curveball

I ever threw: knew it was out of here before
it ever left my hand. He looks to go on, but doesn’t
say it—how could he, in front of all

these people, even just the one. I watch
him wiping his brow, as he resolves,
next time, to hold on the whole way home.