Breathing heavily but with calm he throws one punch and the next, his eyes steady, not moving in and out, through his eyes to his soul you can see himself balance on a tight wire of his emotions, he is otherwise ferocious, muscles tensed only when hitting or being hit, his punch knocks his opponent not out but knocks surprise into him, his opponent’s eyes open white, scared, his aura searching for a way out already, the blacks of his eyes droopingly, paralysed on the opponent. He hits the other hard and knocks him back and with a last swing he rips up and knocks the side of the other guy’s temple, he’s down, the crowd goes wild, the boxer retreats to the opposite side of the ring, head down eyes toward the knees and legs of the crowd, to look up and acknowledge a victory would be beyond him, he is desensitised to the roars of the crowd, the tears and hopelessness of his opponent, the hopelessness of himself he is not desensitised, he puts his head down because to make amends for his past he has to fight and that’s what he was bred to do, his greatest growing out of his deepest hurts and pains. The victor goes home and sits in the shadows and the dark, and what looms over him is the emptiness of life that seems to have a piece broken from it, a human who feels he has something missing, and so he chases his greatness to fill that void and so he is the best, given this injury by God, through webs and weaves of a complicated universe, somewhere out there it is etched that a man struggles.

And he wins or dies, it seems to be both. With the gloves at the end of his straying hands, he sits at the end of light and stares into darkness for that second or minute or hour he is fighting, he lives in the shadow for the rest of his life, coated by the black he attempts to douse his soul in light but it is difficult, constant tears, it seems the victor is the Loser dictated by a circumstance out of his control and kept there to become something the world has never seen and does not want to see, to look at right in the eye because it would show something barbaric, hidden, a lost boy not caught by the outstretched hands of altruism, falls and hits the concrete and with his broken bones he becomes a beast. His loss is his victory, his victory is his loss of humanity, his humanity is what he wants but is long gone and that is his greatness.