Shine On, Luz Véliz!

Shine On, Luz Véliz! — page 1 — We are very very small but we are profoundly capable of very very big things Stephen Hawking

Shine On, Luz Véliz! — page 2 — 1 1 So there’s before it happened Before I learned to use crutches Before I needed physical therapy Before before before Welcome to After I grab a trash bag that’s almost as tall as I am LAWN AND LEAF the box says Perfect for raking out the whole soccer section of my closet Perfect for clearing out Before Soccer shoes Into the bag Shin guards Into the bag white and blue uniforms The bag Three trophies one for being the top scorer in the whole Tri Cities Junior League Bag I can’t look at this stuff anymore Then there’s the ball Am I keeping it No way Well No Okay fi ne I can’t let go of my soccer ball yet I’m not supposed to dribble it in the house but I pop it into the air with the toe of my shoe and bounce it on my good knee The knee that bends easy as a Slinky Clean

Shine On, Luz Véliz! — page 3 — joint perfect tendons I’m thankful for one healthy knee Really I am But I’m sad too I used to have two of them I shove the ball to the very back of my closet behind a wall of cardboard bricks I used to make forts with Now for the posters of my soccer heroes I yank out each pushpin Down falls Abby Wambach top scorer of the US Women’s Team Down goes the World Cup team photo every neck with a gold medal and captain captain Megan Rapinoe raising the trophy high I crumple the posters into big wads and stuff them into the trash bag Mom says to stop looking back so here I am trying but it’s hard to forget Sometimes I flash into the past A memory memory will photobomb my brain Like that run That last day on the soccer field run It plays over and over in my head a YouTube video on continuous autoplay Legs pumping feet churning up the grass my body a missile speeding toward the goal I know the accident happened Obviously But at the same time it’s like I’m still running The goal getting closer and Mom cheering in the stands Dad shouting Pour it on which makes me run even faster Some me kept on running but I couldn’t go with her It’s like she went on without me to where I was supposed to go Now we’ll never find each other Instead of scoring I felt a leg sweep under me my body spinning backward the blur of another jersey and pain spiraling out from my knee and ankle Doctors would later 2

Shine On, Luz Véliz! — page 4 — tell me my anterior cruciate ligament tore my shin broke and my patella fractured All I knew then was a dark tunnel my vision gone and the screaming pain growing louder So maybe I am almost used to it now The leg I mean The pain meds and the therapy and the discussions about whether to do surgery At least I can walk No more crutches or canes I’m left with a wobbly knee they say Which means I can’t play soccer this spring or maybe ever I lost the thing I was best at The thing that filled three evenings a week and Saturday mornings gave me automatic friends at the local league and at school The thing that made me special Now I’m plain Luz Bran muffin girl instead of blueberry cinnamon And now Mom and Dad freak out if I race someone to the bus or charge up stairs two at a time or even walk fast if you can believe it They say my knee could give So yeah I’m getting used to the knee The thing that bothers me is Dad He hardly talks to me anymore It’s like he can’t get over it I guess I’m not surprised He coached me my whole life I held a soccer ball before I held a spoon they tell me Eleven years is a long time even to a grown up I haul my trash bag of soccer stuff to the living room where Dad’s up a ladder putting a new light fixture on the ceiling fan Does he see me at all Can I help I ask Maybe hand you some tools I’m kind of good at mechanical things I installed my own 3

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