Deonte Osayande

Expendable

In sports, everyone
eventually becomes replaceable, the lucky
don’t see who’s next biting at their heels

and in the end our bodies are on borrowed time,
eventually betraying us, with loan payments

that we have to pay later on in life
but I always knew I was expendable
from the day my high school coach
told me he never favored me and tried

to have me replaced by a runner who
wasn’t even as fast as me and one
that I thought was my enemy

until we had guns drawn on us
when we returned to school.

Deonte Osayande is a retired sprinter turned nonfiction writer and poet.