The Fall

by Tal Bauer

I will not beg the past to spoon-feed me a future.

So I stay here. I stay with the man who used to be my world, even if I’ve been exiled, even if my memories are a mosaic of broken glass.

You don’t brawl like you’re a fourth-liner, because you’re not. You play beautiful, brilliant hockey; that’s your job.” He’s right and wrong at the same time. He’s describing the player I’ve always been, but that player disappeared the second Blair crumpled. “Beautiful hockey doesn’t mean shit if you’re not there.”

I think about time slips and second chances, about love that transcends logic, about brothers who still love each other from the beyond, and about the terrible grace of losing everything and the fierce joy of working to build it back.

Our nameplates have been updated: Callahan-Kendrick.

this would look awful on a jersey