Learning to Enjoy Hard-Earned Fatigue

Ah yes, those bleary-eyed hours when my feet ache, my shoulders pull, my neck perches like a wire — tense and pulsing, hunger hums through me like a white noise, backbone stretching, straightening, falling again with my breath into the cradle of my center.

I’m bony, too bony, perhaps, but the muscle that binds me together has carried me through this day, this evening, this hour, and I think there is some grace in that, some loveliness, whatever the striped and sunken cavern of my ribcage suggests.

To think I once believed that I wasn’t made for labor, that my body would wear like a pink eraser, come apart into pieces under pressure, shrink with use, that it was made to correct others’ mistakes. No. I am made of — what? — not a metaphor. Only muscle.