Two hundred thousand of them, and I have every one.
I hold the whole field: the churned mud, the towers of speaker where the sound comes out heavy enough that I can feel it pushing back against me, the man on the tall stage and the crowd below him. When they jump, all of them at once, I take them all back down.
This is the easiest work I do. They rise a hand's width, they trust me, I return them. Over and over. They think they are defying me. They are only borrowing.
I hold the plastic cup of warm beer, tilting in her grip. I hold the child asleep on the father's shoulders, folded soft over his head, gone completely, arms hanging. That is the deepest trust a body can give me, the sleeping weight, the total surrender, and I have never once dropped one. I hold the tents that will lean in the night. I hold the moon over all of it, exactly as far as I always hold it.
Near the fence a young one is sitting in the churned mud, not dancing, and her friend crouches and says she has been carrying so much lately. I checked her. She weighs what she has always weighed. There is nothing extra on her, nothing in her hands, and yet she sits lower than the others, pressed down by something I cannot find and cannot lift for her.
I do not understand it. I only know I am under her too, holding what I can reach.
They will leave tomorrow, aching, sunburned, certain they were somewhere weightless.
They were never weightless. That was me.
That was me the entire time, and I did not let go.