Brenda Neth's poem uses a volleyball game to show a woman facing her own death. She is tall, fierce, and determined to keep playing, even though, as the poem puts it, she "cannot ignore what she knows." Her illness keeps her grounded, yet she cries "Not yet" and takes one more chance. The game becomes a way of refusing to give up the only moment she has, which is now.
The speaker watches her from the outside and seems both admiring and uneasy. She is "awkward, alive, ambitious," and her drive is thrilling, but it also isolates her: she has no sense of a "teammate," and her victory is "silenced." The line "Everyone knows but her" is puzzling, since earlier she seems aware of her illness, so the poem may be hinting at denial or at the gap between what she and others will say aloud. The mood is tense and bittersweet, a burst of energy shadowed by loss. The final lines, about remembering "what it was like to die," leave a quiet, haunting ache.