So this is what all the panic in your blood was for. You dragged me here at six in the morning, shoulders already braced like we were walking into a fight, and I want you to know I noticed the courage in that. Your heart, which asks for nothing, simply picked up the pace and said, fine, we run now.
I felt you look around the room. That warm flush up the neck, the one you get when you think everyone is watching, that was just me flooding you with a little extra fuel, in case the watching turned into something I'd have to run from. It never does. It's only ever mirrors and other frightened animals pretending not to be frightened. Your jaw was clenched the whole first song. I unclenched it around the third.
Then the good part. You put weight into my legs and I remembered what I am for. Not the sitting, not the long gray afternoons folded into a chair. This. The lungs going wide, the sweat doing its clever cooling trick down the spine, the heart pounding out its yes, yes, yes. For eleven minutes you stopped narrating and just let me work, and I have missed that quiet more than you know.
You'll skip tomorrow. You always do around the nineteenth, when the newness wears off and the mornings win. I'm not keeping score. I'll be here either way, doing the pulse, the breath, the small warm engine under everything.
But before you fall asleep in your coat again: water. Please. I moved a lot of it out of you today and I gave it gladly.
Just put a little back.