I’m jealous of the way you walk.

The way your feet swing and rush and fall like that brief moment of terror as you teeter from one foot to another doesn’t grip your stomach.

The way you wave off laser safety eyeglasses or a plan for food like it’s nothing.

Your eyes will always be there, surely as they have always been.

We’ll improvise and just find a place!

My body rattles inside of me. I took a step long ago and have not yet hit the ground, plummeting with no horizon in sight. The next 5 years certainly. 10 more years at the longest.

My body rattles inside of me. I am warped from flipping from brain to body to mind to earth. My perception of my body has become another sense, vibrating within me, just below the surface. I can feel each hot flush of blood move through me—it would almost be mindfulness if I’m not ripped from moment to moment by the shifting within. Never fully in one moment, the momentum of my body whipping me back in and out. Brain to body to mind to earth.

Does your body ever rattle? Does your body body? Has your body ever detached for just a moment? Have you felt the vertigo of your own body’s gravity sucking you in? Not yet? Your body may. Any body can. Most bodies will. But not your body, never your body surely… 

Do you trust your body?

My body tells me things. It bullies me and hurts me and scares me but I know all of the things my body can body. We have no secrets my body and I, though I do not pretend to know what will come. Our understanding is one of acceptance not clarity. My body is not malicious, it is powerful, ripe with the potential of a being one step away from chaos. I know my body but I do not trust it. Feral. Bounding from brain to body to mind to earth.

I traded my body trust for my rattling body, not because I wanted to, but because one must exist without the other. Without body trust my body is an alarm bell, everything is a sign that cannot be ignored. When the alarms are true I am glad I listened, my body tells me things that scare me but fear is a powerful protective tool. Sometimes those rattles are aftershocks, reverberating from body to mind. My body’s gravity is so strong it warps time and I’m back where I have been but the threat is long gone. Sometimes a twinge of pain is just that. 

…And my body trust crumbles a bit more.

I see how your body bodys like it’s always bodied and I’m jealous. I’m still learning how my body bodys, an extended degree, a daily defense. When you sleep does your body keep bodying? You don’t keep one ear to the ground listening for the rattle? I cannot set the project down, there are no breaks when your body doesn’t body.

Can you see my body rattle? Such violent storms invisible without that kind of vision. You see glimpses, I know. They flare up and out for brief moments and my body makes your body ice and flames. 
 

If you are quiet and listen you can see my body rattle all of the time. Your body waits patiently and watches the clouds for the next storm. That is body love. Seeing a body rage against itself and lending your body to weather it from the storm. Sometimes I can feel the rattle quiet when you are around. My body entrained to yours. I love your quiet body, it does not fight or push the rattle in me, it’s just there to absorb the waves and sometimes, if we are quiet, my body bodys.