glimpses, definitive glances into sidelong pasts and futures, and wonderment, happiness, gladness, joy at playing defense again, place in the world as always, but a good place to be, i remember you north carolina, but these fields were much better this time around, so nice, so soft, i remember nothing of the layouts, no cuts, no bruises, just the layout themselves, green short grass, real cleats on real fields, so nice, so very very nice, and making it to a place i'd never seen, or really, maybe seen, but surreal, to play in a semi, sort of, to be tied with the co-ed national champions, weird, completely, but happy and sore, content and sore, ready to soar, with no direction home, inertia, momentum, the tether reaches a limit, a length constraint, but the direction, the vector, the goal the place to aim for aim high bullseye target boutique, blurred in sights, unsure of distance travelled, unable to dial in, predator camo, blended, unable to break through defenses layers deep, and have to try, have to pierce, have to break on through