At 6:00 the small box on the bedside table begins to shriek, and the body it woke goes rigid, then reaches, then falls back into the mattress, and I hold all of it: the arm flung out, the phone, the cheap plastic clock, the pillow now pressed over one ear, the whole warm weight of a person who does not want to rise.
I am holding the water in the glass by the bed. I am holding the coffee that will be poured downstairs in twenty minutes, and I will hold it level in the cup no matter how the hand shakes. I am holding the floor under the feet that swing down and test it, the way they test it every morning, as if some morning it might not be there. It is always there. I put it there.
The human sits on the edge of the bed and does not stand. It says it is tired. Not the muscles: I would feel that, the extra slump, the sag toward me. This is the other tired, the one that weighs nothing on my scale and yet folds the shoulders down as heavily as any load I have measured.
I have checked. There is nothing in the hands. There is nothing on the back. And still the body leans toward the earth like it is carrying something I cannot find.
I cannot lift that. It was never mine to lift. But the feet do reach the floor, and the floor holds, because I hold the floor.
Stand up. I have you.
I have had you every morning of your life, and I have you now, and I do not let go.