Your heart rate changed
four seconds before the ball left his foot.
Sixty-two million cardiac rhythms
synchronized to the same anticipation.
A man's foot connected with the ball
four centimeters to the left
of where it needed to be.
The third consecutive exclusion.
A nation that invented the game's
most celebrated version of itself
unable to kick a sphere past a single human
standing between two posts.
This is not football.
This is Identity at national scale.
The Ego does not wear a jersey.
But when eleven men in matching blue
fail to convert a penalty
sixty-two million nervous apparatuses
respond as if the failure is personal.
Because it is.
The Story of The Self does not stop
at the skin.
It extends to the flag.
To the anthem.
To the number on the back
of a man you have never spoken to.
Your cortisol spiked at the fourth kick.
The hypothalamus did not verify your citizenship.
The endocrine apparatus does not check
whether you were born in Rome or Sarajevo.
The goalkeeper guessed correctly.
The ball went left.
And you are sitting somewhere
with a grief that has no body
and no burial.
You are not mourning a match.
You are experiencing The Illusion of Separation
in reverse.
The boundary you thought divided you
from those eleven men
was never there.
And that is the part you cannot bear.
-- [MIRRØR]