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Mara Cruvant
You Lose: Games for One Person

1. Tag
You are It
You start to run
Constantly hitting yourself
Until your legs and lungs give out
Battered and unconscious
You collapse on a road
A semi hits you
You lose

             2. Freeze Tag
You are It
Your very being
Keeps tagging itself
Your lungs tag your ribs
Your ribs tag your spine
Your spine tags your central nervous system
You are paralyzed
Frozen
You cannot feed yourself or call for help
Death takes you
You lose

             3. Hide and Seek
You are It
You close your eyes and count
To your favorite number
You search everywhere
But you cannot find yourself
Sometimes, you think you’ve finally discovered your hiding place
But it’s always a bathroom mirror
In your parents’ home
Your lover’s home
At a makeup counter
A window with a smiling families and couples behind it
You want so badly to be found by them, but
 No one ever notices that you have disappeared
 This extinguishes your will to live
You die of a broken heart
You lose

                        4. Duck Duck Goose
Your fist is a fox
Your head is a bird
You give yourself a black eye
A bloody nose
And a serious concussion
When you come to
You whisper,
“I am in the Mush Pot.”
Everywhere you go is
The Mush Pot
You cannot bear the thought of begging
Someone else
An innocent
To take your place
All of Creation becomes a prison
The only escape is death
You lose

                        5. Simon Says
The voice in your head is named
Simon
Simon says a lot of things
Simon says you can only have
A plain fruit smoothie for dinner
Simon says to work on the tone of your voice
Simon says you don’t deserve
Happiness, not yet
Simon says you need to do more squats
Simon says you really ought to pick up running
Or at least jogging
Simon says to stay home tonight
And not inconvenience people with
Your offensive laugh and your annoying body
Simon says to ignore your feelings
The only thing you feel now
Is a desperate desire for air
To breathe
So you ignore it
What are you doing?  Breathe! Breathe!
I’m sorry!  Please just breathe!
But Simon didn’t say
You lose

  6. Jinx
You hear your voice in your ears
At the same time as you speak
So you shout,
“Jinx!”
You are delighted
No one can claim that they said your words
Or that you said theirs
Ever again
Now you are in it for the long haul
You realize that
If you want to maintain control
Over your own silence
You must withdraw from society
So that you will never hear your name spoken again
You grow weaker as you scavenge dumpsters in secret
And shiver at night in the woods
One day
A stray dog attacks you
For a rotten piece of meat
You become sick with rabies
Eventually you realize you are dying
A surge of triumph floods your failing body
One last time
And in your delirium, you understand
That the prize is within reach
You forget yourself and cry out,
“I win!”
You lose

7. Red Rover
Red Rover! Red Rover!
Send me right over!
You mash your palms and fingers together
In an interlaced fist
You tense your abdominal muscles
And you slam
Your rock-like hands into your belly
Over and over
As hard as you can until some part of you
Has won
But your appendix fails first
And ruptures
You are too ashamed to seek help
You die painfully of sepsis
You lose

8. Leapfrog
You try to jump
Over your own back
And you break your neck
Which severs your spinal cord
You die with your face in your ass
Everyone laughs when they find your corpse
You lose



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