Thursday, August 12, 2010

10 Minute Prompt: What your body refuses to forget

My body refuses to forget the day I went skiing, cross country, with my friend who I'd tried to woo as a lover, but who toyed with me, holding me all night on July 4th, neither watching nor making fireworks. That day was bright and cold and full of people on the graded slope access. My breath in the air was crystalline, my body was warm with hauling myself uphill. My body doesn't care much about how my friend became annoyed with me or how she left me behind. What my body refuses to forget is the first minute of the not-quite free fall of downhill -- my feet sliding, sliding forward, sliding out from under me, my right foot following the ski and my ankle bending and pulling things that would rather not be bent or pulled. How can my body forget being broken? Though it only took 6 weeks to heal the fine cracks in the bone, my ankle has never forgotten. When it rains, when I step just a little wrong off the edge, when I sit too long in one position, my ankle whines a little, winces, creaks, and spends a moment pining for the time before that day on the cold snowy slopes of Stevens Pass.

No comments:

Post a Comment