Not loud, just persistent. Repeated, rhythmic even. Knocking at the door for months or maybe even years, they all feel the same now. I don’t believe in time anymore, other than to meet a friend for coffee. We agree on a moment and call it a time. But using it to pace and measure moments of my life? Befores and afters and whens seem like dangerous concepts meant to keep me on a track that doesn’t exist unless I play along.
Back to the knocking of the uninvited intruder outside. What will I find, weariness, when I let you in as a welcomed traveler deserving of minimally civilized hospitality? As opposed to ignoring your pleas for food and water at my door?
Your stay is more brief than I expected, you breeze through like a draft when I thought surely you would be the worst kind of squatter, impossible to dislodge. I feel the change in decor though, even as you leave. This is a home where weariness can find shelter, however brief. There’s now a new painting in my living room I’ve never seen before but now love. It is deep blues and night skies and a calm I thought impossible if you were in my life. I felt my bones give in while you were here, I thought it meant I would collapse. It did not. It meant I could stop wearing the heavy coat of she-who-shall-never-be-weary. Instead, those bones remembered they’re a living, responsive system of collagen and mineral crystals that adapt to context and load. They adapted to the relief of one less retaining wall to hold up.
