Here *The Coach Who (v2)

I joke that coaches don't play,

but the truth tastes metallic -

like a memory bitten too hard

and swallowed anyway.

I don't play because the field rejected me,

spat me out like a broken bone,

that healed in the wrong shape.

I don't play because every time i tried,

someone rewrote the rules

while i was still bleeding on the grass.

So now i speak like i've mastered love,

but the only thing i've mastered

is watching other people be chosen

while i warm the shadows of the sidelines.

I know the strategies,

the escapes

the illusions -

not because i'm wise,

but because i learned them as a survivor

crawling out of someone else's wreckage.

They think i guide them

but i'm just warning them

not to step on the same landmines

that blew pieces of me

into the person i pretend to be.

Because coaches don't play -

not when the game once mangled them,

not when the heart once collapsed

under the weight of being almost loved.

And when the night closes in,

and the world grows quiet,

I sit in the stadium of my ribs -

empty, echoing, condemned -

knowing I was never the mentor,

never the hero,

never the wise one...

Just the child who learned the rules of love

by being the one no one stayed for.