All the While

It has held me steady.

The sun is on my shoulders and I am letting it stay.

My feet keep finding the beat of something playing down the hall. I laugh hard enough to feel it in my stomach.

I am used to noticing my body when I need something from it. To keep going. To look different. To feel better. I notice it less when nothing is wrong.

And yet it knows the feeling of taking my shoes off after dancing for hours. The particular tiredness of getting off a plane somewhere far from home.

It has carried grief through ordinary days too. Into the grocery store. Through airports. Into conversations where I was trying to sound fine.

There have been mornings when I asked it to get up before I was ready. There have been years when I asked it to look like something else.

Warm water. Good food. Music loud enough that sitting still felt impossible. Sleeping past the time I meant to get up. Being held a few seconds longer than I expected.

Today the sun is on my shoulders. There is music somewhere down the hall.

My feet find it before I do.

In noticing,
S. Marie
C U M I C H E