Politics 2025: I Take My Marbles and Go Home
It dawns on me that every game/is not itself but the sum of all past games
Don’t know why I bought marbles in the first place— only someone said, when I came here, that marbles mattered, that playing mattered, that one could win, given a warm day in late spring, a spread of concrete with a chalk circle, a face on the other side eager with hope. Don’t look at that face, they said. Just shoot. And so there was shooting. And there was squatting and aiming and planning and moving around the circle. And there was standing and fetching what rolled under your uncle’s car into the oil smear, what rolled into the grass. Shooting, and the being shot at, and no one brought popsicles. I simply found myself here. I found that marbles was the agenda of the day. Who can blame me for anteing up? The face across the circle from me, and my own face across the circle from you, and the warm spring, and the shooting. And the cries of “not fair,” and the subtle elbow bump. And the appeal to the crowd and the jostle of opinion. It dawns on me that every game is not itself but the sum of all past games, every shot heavy with all shots that came before, and all opinions on those shots, the alliances, the fallout. The sun lolls towards the horizon and a breeze kicks up and I look around to realize I don’t like this game, never enjoyed it. Years—or hours— whatever—have passed, the world of circles and angles is not the world, not even much at all of it. Give them here; I’m going home for today. Maybe we can circle up again tomorrow, if the weather’s fair.




What a beautiful piece. It helped me to see the world is a less scary perspective. It felt calming. Please write more.
Wow.