Yesterday was the first time I’ve played soccer

since high school. I woke up this morning 

and texted my lover I was sore as a lemon. Who knows

why — maybe because sore looks like sour. Maybe because lemons 

are often squeezed, rarely eaten. And they’re sore 

about that. I eat lemons, though. One of the nerves 

in my mouth doesn’t work quite right because I’ve eaten

so many. Every adolescent afternoon, I’d slice 

a lemon into circles, halve them, and add salt. 

You must be deficient in something, my mother 

insisted, like vitamin C. This was in high school, 

when I played soccer solely with girls. 

Yesterday, it was all men. Any praise they gave 

unraveling to reveal their dense, plastic incredulity. 

Afterwards, I pulled my shirt up over my bra. My stomach 

shimmered, shook — plate of Jell-O at the end of a buffet.   

I can’t remember the age I stopped throwing my body

around like a pile of Play-Doh or a hot potato. But I 

remember my mother in a chair beside my hospital bed,

pre-tonsillectomy. I remember the heaviness of my head, stuffed 

with valium. Her voice as she filmed me with her phone, 

asked about the cheese pizza I’d ordered yesterday 

and eaten alone on the back porch. Stupid criminal, she says. 

I found the greasy box.