The check came late

The shoulder didn't hurt. That's the part that won't leave me. It delayed. A half-second gap between the signal and the check, and I knew it before Rob did because I know what my own body sounds like when it's lying to me. I tied Cal up fast. Got out the round. Walked back to the corner normal. Rob looked at me in the corner and I looked at him and that was the whole conversation. Corridor after, I said don't say anything. He nodded. That's the second time this month I've shut a man up about my body.

The floor saw it — the older lads, the ones who know what a flagged shoulder looks like. A few of them looked at me different in the third.

I had this in swimming. The click. The "fine" that wasn't fine. I am twenty-eight and I'm watching my own skeleton file a complaint.

Voss tonight. The South Melbourne veteran tried to go to the body and Voss just walked through him. The kid who beat me two years ago is now faster and meaner than the kid who beat me two years ago. I'm chasing a moving target with a shoulder that has a half-second delay. I want him at his best. I keep saying that. Don't know if it's discipline or ego. Probably both. Probably the same thing in my mouth.

The autumn slot moved up two weeks. Ten days after the card. I'm calling Monday. That's me admitting to a receptionist that the body is in the shop. If Dr Reyes says wait, September's gone. If he says go, I spend the lead-up in a brace. Either way the six rounds I said out loud yesterday is now a number I'm proving to a man with a calendar.

I posted Cal. Left hook to the body. Floor watching me like a fighter again. I didn't write the part where the check came late. I don't know who I'm protecting. Probably me. Probably the September number.