proprioception

they told you to lift with your legs
and you nodded,
it made sense in theory
but your back was already doing
the work by that point
because we’re all guilty of thinking
we’re stronger than we are

you lifted everything with your heart
for years—
the grief, the guilt, the accumulated
weight of every room you left alone
every person you held
too tight or not tight enough—
all of it hoisted from the chest
like the chest was built for that

it wasn’t

sometimes someone you love
is in the middle of something
and every nerve says move—
run toward them, run away,
do something with your hands—
and the work, the actual work,
is to plant your feet
become a post, a fixed point,
let them triangulate off you
while you just
hold

I have not always done this well

the legs know when it’s time
before the heart does—
the quiet exit, door closed
without drama,
the body finally agreeing
with what the mind has known
for months

sometimes the bravest thing
is the leaving

moving forward costs more—
toward the person,
toward the thing you did,
into the heat of it, the consequence,
standing in the middle of someone’s
justified anger
with nowhere to be
but there

you don’t fold
you don’t run
you take it
and you use your legs
to stay vertical through the storm

and then you start to understand
what legs are actually for—
not just the standing,
not just the walking away or forward,
but the whole surprising grammar of them,
every posture you didn’t know
you had available

because kneeling is its own kind of lifting—
the weight transferred downward,
the body saying what the mouth
has circled for years,
forehead nearly to the floor

and still, somehow,
we never realize
how much strength there is
in the bended knee

someone will tell you
to put it down

put that shit down, they’ll say,
meaning well,
meaning you look exhausted,
meaning I don’t know how to watch this

but grief is not a box
you set in the corner—
grief is a weight you learn
to carry differently,
not in the chest where it started,
not hoisted on the heart
that was never built for it,

but shifted down,
into the legs,
into the long slow walk
of the rest of your life,
your father’s weight in one,
your mother’s in the other,

and you just
keep
moving