My legs are weak and shapeless, and someday I will regret not running.
I should run because old me can’t.
My heart needs protection: from stress and from hereditary high cholesterol. I take the pill dutifully (mostly) and think about what I eat (except when I am stressed, or busy, or it is the slightest of holidays or when I Just Can’t Think About That). I rise too quickly to anger, to freak-out, and let it burn burn burn.
My enormous gray cat sits beside me; he loves nothing more in the world than ten seconds of attention and pleasure: getting petted while he eats, a grade-A head scratching, chasing a dangling ribbon. But 30 Rock calls.
My luckiest day was when I said no to a pool trip and unwittingly to lightning that all else being equal would have been aimed at me. So my sweetest ever friend can never again ______.
And it is my duty as the one who carries on
to match the strength of that bolt, to fight its randomness with intention, purpose, of an equal strength.
And it is my duty as the one who knows better
and has lost furry loved ones before
to take the time now to dangle that ribbon and appreciate the chance and the soft wonder.
And it is my duty as the owner of those legs and that heart
to give old me a fighting chance, to dance stupidly and chicken run and befriend
the daunting elliptical machine and hear in the whirr of each go-round and in each heightened heartbeat
I can, I can, I can.
Yay, you’re back!