Ayumi's Point of View
They told me tennis was rules and routine—
but I brought sunflowers and wore tangerine.
The court looked too serious, all neat and in line,
so I drew hearts with my shoe and said, "This? This is mine."
He stood on the other side, tidy and tall,
like a perfectly folded thought, not meant to fall.
Kenji, with eyes like a question withheld—
how do you serve quiet and still make me compelled?
I tossed up the ball with a wink and a prayer,
hit it sideways—it bounced like it didn't much care.
He chased it with grace, returned it with calm—
his style said "discipline," mine screamed "alarm."
But oh—when our rackets began to converse,
the rhythm grew weird in the best kind of verse.
I smashed like a storm, he placed like a breeze,
yet somehow our chaos moved in gentle degrees.
He doesn't say much, but when he returns
my smirks with a smirk, my chest softly burns.
I call him my rival, my match, my straight man—
but maybe he's more than the plan I outran.
When we play, the world spins in petal-toned hues,
like rallies are poems and rackets are clues.
I don't know the score—don't care who will win.
I only know something strange sparks within.
Is it love? Maybe. Or something adjacent—
a flutter, a spark, a sweet displacement.
He steadies my wild, and I shake up his still—
we meet in the middle by force and by will.
And if I lose every point, that's okay,
because he looks at me like I've won anyway.
Tennis? It's just how we learn to collide—
me in a whirlwind, him by my side.