Nachos

You want to eat nachos and cheese at the ballgame, but every time you buy them, someone knocks them out of your hand, leaving you covered in hot cheese. This started when you were eleven, when your mother let you buy them, and you were walking up the ramp back into the stand, the daylight emerging as if you’re exiting a spaceship, when it happened. You turn around and there’s a blur wearing a baseball cap, the culprit running through time, as you hold an empty container. He’s on his way to your teenage years, to adulthood where he gets your beer too. Eventually you give up, just watch the games. You sit quietly as the team loses over and over again, the same bitterness repeated through the years, long gone the victories of childhood. One August evening you reach your limit. You run out, unable to listen to that certain pop from the other team’s bat, homerun yet again. Like Lot’s wife you turn, looking at the soaring ball, still walking forward and run into a child, his nachos flying like confetti, cheese covering his jersey. A statue, he follows your blur of tracer light, speeding away. You think, I’ll see you again someday, kid, as you speed into his future.