There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

by Hanif Abdurraqib

And listen, ain’t that a kind of love? To say You are worthy of the time it takes to dismantle you. Yes, do not waste language on our enemies, but an enemy, to me, implies a permanence.

like in

36 years knowing what’s up there & it is

we might

During his sophomore year, before SUV controversies

I love whatever can feel like a good memory, even as it is already unfolding.

But the commitment to praying is the work.

And so, made from the lips of a person who loves us, we’re all one good prayer from being royals, or something close.

What it comes down to is that some of us would rather live a long life of what some might consider failure, but do it in a place that will catch you, every time.

anyone. I am not especially easy to fool, but I am a romantic, which I suppose means that at the right hour, I am everyone’s fool.

I have even run out of ways to talk about beauty, which is surely a sin, but it is also how I know that I have witnessed that which dismantles a capacity for language, renders any attempts foolish.

a place I lived, far away from a place I missed.

keeping the dealings of the mob secret.

and its surrounding areas was anything but

It left

We don’t know what we’d do with ourselves if we won here. It is romantic to be cursed, to feel like the world has it out for just you.

Endings can be more romantic, but beginnings are the only honest thing.