The Floor

I watched an older man at the grocery store bend down

to pick up a jar that had rolled away from him.

It took him three tries.

His body didn't cooperate the way bodies are supposed to.

The first time he almost made it, his hand shaking,

the second time his knees buckled,

the third time he got it.

He straightened up slowly, fighting his own weight,

and nobody clapped.

The jar was just sitting there in his hand like he'd won something.

I kept walking. I picked up my things and paid and left.

But I keep thinking about that—

how gravity isn't some abstract thing,

it's his knees, it's my mother's back,

it's the way the floor keeps pulling us down

a little more each year

until we can't even bend to pick up something we dropped.