Floodlight study

Fog holds light the way water holds a stone: completely, and without effort. One tower over one court, and no one under it. The beam does not reach the ground so much as dissolve into it, and the court beneath is a rumour of tramlines and glass.

A floodlight over an empty court is a strange machine. It is built for witnesses, for the arc of a ball, for a body stretching past what it believed its reach to be. Tonight it has none of that. It burns anyway.

Consider who this light belongs to at this hour. Not the players who just left, carrying their small wins and the one point they will replay at a red light on the drive home. Not yet the ones arriving tomorrow, who do not know what the court will ask of them. The light stands in the gap between those people, holding the space open.

Empty is the wrong word for a court at night. Waiting is closer. The mesh is welded to take an impact that is not coming yet. The glass is set to return a ball no one has hit. Everything here is ready before anyone is.

Maybe that is what the light means. Somewhere nearby, someone is asleep, and the person they have not been yet already has a place lit for them.