Kneeling

I bent down to get something from under the couch.

Something small. Something forgotten.

The knee made a sound.

Not loud. Just loud enough.

Like a branch breaking.

Like a warning.

Then the pain.

A sharp line from knee to thigh,

a reminder that the body

is a thing that breaks.

I froze.

My hand still reaching.

My knee still bent.

The pain still bright.

I grabbed the armchair to pull myself up.

Had to use both hands.

Had to press my whole weight against it

like it was the only thing holding me together.

When I stood, the knee held.

But something had shifted.

Some invisible line had been crossed.

I was thirty-five.

I am thirty-five.

But now I'm also the person

who grips furniture to stand.

The person whose knees break

when she bends.

The person who has to think

about the mechanics of standing.

I don't recognize myself in this.

In the slowness.

In the way my body now announces itself

with pain.

With the sound of something breaking.

I'm not young anymore.

This is the thing nobody tells you—

not that youth ends,

but that you'll be doing something ordinary,

bending to pick up something forgotten,

when you finally understand it.