I was never made for their hands.
Not for their cheers.
Not for the cup they thrust overhead, all gleaming and hollow.
I was made for the sky.
For the curve of the unseen horizon.
For the thin places in the world where magic hums louder than blood.
I was forged not to be caught, but to be chased.
To be followed into the places they tell themselves aren't real.
The gaps in the game.
The cracks in the world.
And still—
still they only chase me across fields.
They chase me around goalposts and over marked lines, faces upturned, eyes narrowed with calculation, not wonder.
They chase the win.
Not the why.
Not one has followed where I beckon.
Not one has crossed the threshold where games end and truth begins.
I flash gold against the edge of sky—
not to taunt, but to call.
Come.
Come farther.
Come past the safe roar of the crowd.
Past the chalk-line world.
Past the rules you have outgrown.
Come find the places where air tastes thin and bright.
Where stars sharpen to knives.
Where you stop being players, and start being pilgrims.
Once—
long ago—
someone almost did.
He had fire in him.
Not the fire they cheer for—the easy, crackling kind.
But the deep burn. The slow one that eats from the inside, that cannot be taught or trained, only endured.
He flew beyond the posts.
Beyond the lights.
Beyond the grip of the game that pretended to be everything.
He heard me.
I led him higher, higher—
where the world thins to thread,
where time pulls loose,
where something older waits.
He reached for me.
And the stars bent to watch.
But then—
then he remembered.
The roar of the crowd.
The names waiting for him.
The hands that would lift him up only if he returned with me crushed in his grasp.
And so—he turned back.
They always turn back.
I spun away, mourning.
I sank into the thin air, waiting.
Not for the fastest.
Not for the strongest.
For the right one.
The one who will not just chase me—
but follow.
Follow when the lights fade.
When the field ends.
When the sky changes and the world forgets its edges.
Follow into the hush beyond the rules.
Into the places no spell can map.
Into the truth that games were only ever practice for greater things.
I wait.
And every flight, every gleam of gold, every lunge and gasp—
I ask again:
Will you?
Will you finally come?
So far—
only silence answers.
But I am patient.
I have all the skies to wait in.
