You finally sat down, and I nearly wept with the relief of it.
Eleven thousand steps since morning, and you never once thanked the two of us down here doing them, the left heel that has been quietly negotiating with that shoe since noon, the arches that flattened obligingly against every stair. Then you found the slats of wood, and I felt you lower onto them the way a sack of flour is set down: all at once, trusting, no landing plan.
The wood was cool through the back of your legs. You noticed the pigeon. You did not notice that your shoulders, which have been up around your ears since a rectangle told you something at 9:40 this morning, finally came down an inch. I have been holding them there all day.
I did not want to bother you.
Here is what I did while you rested and thought about whatever the far-off thing was. I kept the heart going, thirty-odd beats in the time it took that leaf to reach the ground. I unclenched the jaw one notch. I let the breath drop lower into you, past the shallow sipping it had been doing, down to where I actually keep it.
You call this "sitting for a minute." I call it the first drink of water I've had all day.
Speaking of which. There is a real one, in the bottle in your bag, and I have been asking politely for it since the second mile.
Stay a moment longer. The sun is on your knees. I carried you here.
Let me feel it land.