Mara Cruvant
You Lose: Games for One Person
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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 |