knocked out

He’s going left, he’s going left. Bad move. Take this! Missed him. Hit on the right side of the jaw. Duck down. Oh no! There’s the right. I see his face, he looks like the devil. Now I’m spinning as slow as I’ve ever spun before, but the color of the ropes and mega-tron are swirling around me like a tornado.

It feels like I have a headache on my shoulder blades. I hear someone screaming at me. That’s the ref. I open my eyes and see nothing but white dots of light. I’m down. This is the first time I’ve been down. What happened? Fuck, he’s counting me out! He’s gotta be counting a million miles an hour. What was that? “Six”?, “Seven”?, I’ve gotta get up! Quick! My calves feel like they’re pushing up a Buick. The colors are spinning again, like they’re trying to help me balance.

Someone’s arms are wrapped around me. They’re talking to me like I’m a child, directly in my ear; and now I know it’s over. My weight is being lifted up onto someone’s shoulders. I realize how small I really am. I can’t lift my head up enough to separate my cheek from the shoulder It’s on, thought I desperately want to. The struggle to do so feels like months. I’m plopped onto a stool against the corner and my tail-bone feels like someone is tapping it with pain incarnate. Dull pulses of pure suffering continue, as my eyes again open.

The faces of my trainer and cornermen are swaying to and fro at an even pace like a metronome set at 60 beats-per-minute. I can hear their voices as clear as day, but they’re talking to the rhythm of a metronome set at 200 beats-per-minute. I try to talk to tell them that everything’s okay, and to slow down, but my speech comes out slurred and barely beginning, as if it were set to a broken metronome set at 1 beat-per-minute. I hear the ring announcer: “The referee calls an end to the action, after seeing the first minute”.