An Open Letter to My Legs;
There is a giant, sleeping novel in you. The way you run. The curling up, close to heart, in bed. Your cuts and burns, your dirt. The hungry lope you adopt, or the lazy stroll. You never want to be too far from home but you are always trying to move.
Thank you for carrying me. For being strong and proud when my heart and mind are timid. For showing me the ways I can move when I am a stone. Thank you for your complex collection of angles and sinew; muscle and bone; hair and straight knee – all the elements that lock and unlock when I walk.
Thank you for being patient with our hurt. I do not yet know where this peach-ripe bruise on you is from or how the aches and paint find their way to your center, how your knees catch their breath with so many steps. I have never been good at solving a problem, only ever good at seeing where the problems are. I am trying to be better with my problems so I do not learn to hate them.
There have been moments where I have hated you. For being too big. For being too boy. I never saw you as solid. You were changing every time I looked at you and then you would hide. You were always too far away from my eyes to be seen as a part of me, but now I know how short-sighted that is. You were a part of me when I did not want you to be, when I did not know how you could be a part of this body. You are a part of me now that I know better, though not fully, how important you are to my space. To my movement. To my body. We have many miles to go.
Love always,
JB