The Court

Same paint, same lines, every time you arrive. The width hasn’t moved since the day it was marked out. The patch at the baseline is worn pale from however many feet have stood there before yours.

It doesn’t change for the cardio session at seven, or the lesson where you’re being corrected on the same fault for the third week, or the social hit where nobody’s keeping score and everybody is.

You arrive different every time. Tired, or restless, or carrying something from the morning that has nothing to do with tennis. Sharp some days, slow on others, distracted by a conversation you’re still finishing in your head. The court doesn’t notice any of this. It offers the same rectangle regardless.

There’s a kind of relief in that, once you stop expecting otherwise. The court isn’t going to meet you halfway. It isn’t going to be easier because you’re tired or harder because you’re good. It holds its shape and waits for you to bring yours.

Maybe this is what the empty court before anyone arrives is actually showing you. Not stillness. Not calm. Just the plain fact of the court, no different for what’s about to happen on it. The same four lines whether what follows is competitive or careless or somewhere in between.

You walk onto it as whatever you are that day. It doesn’t ask which version showed up.

Enough to meet it as you are.