is the urgent need to vomit
and the speech you utter
is riddled with breaks 
in waves of worry
as your brain tries to process
the fact that you
and several thousand coaches, parents, and teenagers
have just evacuated this competition meeting hall
in a panic
created by an unknown agititator on stage.
And then
you start to notice
that some of the people around you
have lost one 
or both of their shoes
in this scramble to escape
what turned out to be nothing
but could have been
the end of everything.
Des Moines.
19 June 2025. 

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