Respite

Sheltering under the shadow of the cherry blossom,

touching knees with friends under a dinner table making summer plans,

eye contact with someone I haven’t met yet, as I bike past his morning walk, the gentle fanning of his hand,

a summer salad left on the doorstep by friends in their grandmother’s china and collectables from their long-haul explorations, now being shared with us,

late-night messages of broken-ness, recorded replies with stifled tears and audio hugs,

freeing release of clicks and cracks between vertebrae as I dance with my body and ask her what she has left for me,

fingertips gliding through an almost non-existent wind as I unfurl my body into a warrior posture, feet planted in drying, dying garden grass,

a moment of stillness, short enough for a sharp inhale.