For nine hours you have not sat down, and I have not complained.
You call it a lineup, three stages, a headliner. I do not know these words. I know that the ground was thrumming through your heels before you could hear anything with your ears, a low pulse coming up through the bones of your legs, and that you liked it, because your own heartbeat climbed up to meet it and I let it. Two hearts in you today, matched. I kept them both.
The sun worked on the back of your neck all afternoon. I sent up thirst around the third act, a small dry flag, and you waved it off for another hour. I understand. There was a person beside you singing the same words you were singing, mouth to mouth across the noise, and I flooded your chest so warmly you mistook it for the song. That was me. I do that when you are held.
Your jaw is loose right now, for once. Your shoulders have come down from your ears where they have lived since a Tuesday I no longer remember the reason for. Whatever a workweek is, I stored it in the neck, and tonight the bass shook most of it loose.
The feet, though. The feet have news. Two small hot animals that carried you across a field and back, that stood their ground through every encore, and are only now, in the dark, allowed to speak.
I will get you home. I always have.
Just water, when you can. And then let me lie you down flat and quiet, and I will spend the whole night putting you back together while you sleep, the way I always do, and you will wake up thinking you did nothing at all.