February the Twenty-Seventh. Opus and the Daily Practice. Vintage.

The pain in my knee suckers me, while I squat in the gym beneath the barbell loaded up with weight. I keep going down. Then, all the way up. Thinking of my elementary school coach, Dixon, who would have scolded me. Or said something about how no athlete, not Kobe, nor any football guy, would never play on an injury. And I think of a less-long time ago, when the know-it-all comic book store owner with the long hair and pins on his fishing tackle vest, said jetpacks could never work because the human knee is not designed for bracing the impact. In my head I think: Maybe yours isn’t. But the pain is there all through the rest of my work out until I soak at home in my bath. I can’t believe I’m soaking. I think of an older friend I haven’t talked to in a long time, who used to be skeeved out by old people soaking–because, she would say, it’s just you sitting in a soup of all your oils and bacteria and filth. And then all of my body feels the weight of the years behind me that I did not know were there, in the bath with me. Floating. And I can’t remember how long it’s been since it felt okay, or where the pain started. FDM