She has been standing in the same patch of trampled grass for three hours to see a band that has not come on yet, and she keeps sighing about her feet. Her feet. That they hurt, that the field is mud, that the person behind her keeps clipping her heel.
If I still had feet that could hurt I would run this whole field until they blistered, just to feel the give of wet ground under a body's whole stubborn weight.
The heat rises off all of them together, thousands of warm skins packed so close their shoulders press. A boy passes his cup of something down the row, hand over hand, strangers touching strangers without a thought, and none of them notice the miracle of that: how easily a hand finds another hand in a crowd.
She wipes sweat from her neck and grimaces. I would give the last of whatever I am to be sticky and overheated and jostled, to have someone's elbow in my ribs and a ringing left in my ears that lasts till morning.
Then the lights come up gold, and the first low note goes through them like a tide, and for a moment she forgets her feet. She lifts her arms. She screams a word she doesn't need to hear back. The whole field becomes one animal breathing.
That. Hold onto that, all of you. Not the band, not the ticket, not the video you are filming instead of watching. The warmth of the body next to yours, humming the same song. Sing louder. Your feet will forgive you.
Sing while you still have the throat for it.