Tarnation

The online ad said don’t let pain define you or your movement, and I said WOW ok rude. It was two in the morning. I imagined if Renee walked in my face would be all lit up by my phone like a raccoon caught in a pantry. Everyone online was running across cliffs in their shiny knee braces, smiling ominously like pain hadn’t once approached them. Mine arrived in a padded envelope with all the wrong insignia on it. I strapped the brace on and instantly became a regional dad. I wanted to point at weather. Explain mulch to whoever who cared enough to listen. Stand with my hands on my hips in the driveway of this midnight nation. Does it help? the follow-up email asked, Renee asked, everyone asked, and I said, Sort of, yeah. Mostly it reminded me I have a body, that my joints were not at all fictional. My bones kept an itemized list of every stupid thing I’d ever done to them in my flimsy shoes. Every staircase taken like a highway. Every time I stretched across the floor to prove my youth was still somewhere on the premises. These days, whenever I stand up there’s a whole overture of vertebrae cracking inside a restless body. Crackle, click, a brief chatter. Still, I’m happy that I can walk. Still I go to the store and buy limes I forgot I already had in the fridge. Still I bend toward the dropped spoon like this small act could either end in a pearl of wisdom, or a very small emergency.