December 7, 2020
With the Intent
Pablo Piñero Stillmann
__________
Things were dicey between her & the boyfriend. I was, I guess, "the other man," even if I didn't much feel like one. An evening after wasted hours of pre-season football, the woman took me to a party at her cousin's place. I say wasted because I hadn't been rooting for a team, but against a rookie quarterback, a kid whose morals weren't up to my holy snuff. The thing with the rookie QB, you see, was that he'd stolen some crab legs in his college days. It infuriated me that, when asked about it, the QB lied, stone-faced. So I wanted him to fail like I'd failed: again & again & no mercy. I went to the supermarket with the intent to purchase dinner, said the press release, but made a terrible mistake instead. Those words stuck with me. Now, when I'm alone with a chance of rain, I like to play a parlor game in which I explain my life to myself that way: I went to [blank] with the intent to [blank], but made a terrible mistake instead. It's unfortunate how everything fits so perfectly: [Her], [love]. [Class], [learn]. [The lake], [relax]. & I haven't seen that woman in years. The cousin's apartment, along with the building that held it high, it all turned to rubble in the earthquake. Walking past the empty lot with Nayeli the other day, I told her I'd known that building from the inside & it was beautiful, full of light. The QB didn't fail, but he didn't succeed, either. In his fifth season in the league, said a recent article, he still has the ability to dazzle and frustrate in equal measures.
__________
Pablo Piñero Stillmann‘s work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, Notre Dame Review, Washington Square Review, and other journals. He recently won the Moon City Short Fiction Award & his short story collection Our Brains and the Brains of Miniature Sharks is coming out in the spring of 2020 (Moon City Press). His novel, Temblador (2014), was published in Mexico by Tierra Adentro.
__________

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.
Posted in All Football '21 and tagged in #boudin, #football, #poetry