Dear Volleyball

From the moment I touched your soft smooth leather

The way it fit in my 9 yr old hands

How you floated for seconds at a time 

Building the suspense

That’s when it became real

My love for you will never stop 

It may frustrate me with technique 

But never would my love terminate

You attached yourself to my heart and lifestyle

Until you became not a practice anymore

But a way of life

Sundays as a 12 yr. old girl 

Playing volleyball in the old tight-fit gyms 

Which called it’s self Net Ninja

Remember when I finally got my overhand serve

Or when I learned what peppering was, 

When I got the hang of those things,

The time I got you stuck in a tree

Or the time I broke our net to make sure

You would never have a hard landing 

Spending every second of my free time 

Working for you and myself I just didn’t know it yet

Volleyball in the yard, like world domination

Who would win technique or power 

The net we’d had for years would catch you 

The way the people on the big screen make it look so easy

Or how I can practice you day after day 

But even after all that work you still slip away

The work the drive the grit I put into you 

Just for you to fall right through 

But you’ll never really know how much I love you 

You possibly just can’t 

The way I know this is because 

I don’t even know how to describe it to you 

The anger

The pain

The joy

The disappointment 

The ache 

The drive 

The memories

The injuries

The great power you behold

All the things I love and hate about you 

But you’ll never know how much I really love you 

No matter how much I tell you I’ll never be good enough for you

And in the end, I’ll still try every day to keep up