This body wakes me at night, all silence and waiting. 

After going to bed at a reasonable hour (I have been returned to the reasonable hours) not so much for the lack of things to do or the energy, but the absence of  will to go further in the moment. 

This is what a seed feels like, buried deep in cold dirt, right?

Last night I woke up around 2 in the morning, itchy-throated and coughing. These seasonal ills linger longer when the body has fewer requirements on it. This, I tell myself, is what a winterized steam pump feels like; the rusty bits itchy against air and metal and gear memory of energy turned into work. I must talk my brain out of steam engine metaphors. They drive me away from where the currents keep depositing me, demanding I make good. It’s easy to show bravado until it isn’t. Cast out into the world again at 52, a few years younger than when Confucius began his great (and last) 12 year journey.

I make myself get up so’s not to wake her up. Her days are still filled with the world while mine are flooding with words, gray hair, and an insistence that mocks wisdom. Drag, drag, drag the body, leftover from scattered winter sleep with the hope of a seed and faith in the love of her whose sleep I guard leaving the bed.

The morning will not be kind. I will have to choose how kind to be to it.