This was a stolen October day, six hours of teaching traded for a two hour flight and a reunion of faces that hadn’t been together for at least five years. The Seattle sky was an infinite sea awash in sunlight. Heat glared down on her as former coworker after former coworker shimmied down the aisle to their seats, watching this game was the backdrop to gather once again. She basked in their company, these people whom she could unabashedly be her truest around. How long it had been since she felt her self this big.
Oh! How much she wanted from this, Rapinoe’s final home game. It meant something, Rapinoe’s exit finally bringing her back to the city post-Covid. It had been heart sucking to leave those years ago, that dream job, dream coworkers, dream air. The change was meant to benefit her son, but sometimes, languishing in the parched desert land where she had always felt like an outsider, she doubted her choices.
As the seconds ticked by, the crowd swelled with barely contained fervor every time the ball came near Rapinoe, but both teams struggled to string together any sort of flow. Her stomach rumbled, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave, felt it important to honor every single minute of the game despite the drag of the game.
Ninety minutes revealed an uneventful, scoreless game so she stuck her hopes to the post-game events. Rapinoe took center field and hope crested once again. Rapinoe leaned into the microphone and spoke, her words an echo of the game. Perfunctory. Forgettable.
But really what did Rapinoe owe any of them? If anything shouldn’t she be allowed this – to exit whenever and however she damn well pleased?
And yet.
And yet in the stands, surrounded by a compassionate coven of friends fractured too soon, she longed for Rapinoe to say something she could cling to, something that would make sense of all the leaving. The consistency of exits. Even her own.

Three months later under a sky leached of color, she sat in her principal’s office. With flippant smiles and fumbled words, her principal spoke of numbers and timing, the vagueness of employee headcount. The principal’s lack of clarity drove the point home – despite her contributions, this spot they held for her was tenuous.
After, in the parking lot, the crunch of ice under her feet, Marta came to mind. Heart-shaped face always adorned with bright red lips, Marta danced with the ball, five steps ahead of everyone else, the unending passion she had for the game powering her every pass, every juke, every shot. She thought about Brazil’s premature exit from the World Cup, Marta’s last. She recalled the look of fiery determination on Marta’s face as she grasped Bunny’s hand, gesturing at the chest of her younger, inexperienced victor. She imagines the choke in Marta’s voice, the build up of defeat, desire.
She didn’t know what Marta had said, but her body language had screamed – take this win and wear it, leverage it, expand it.

She thinks about them often, Rapinoe and Marta – these women who forged dynasties. Wonders if the ripples of their wake are enough for them, these long, dark winter nights.