On Routine

The phone alarm I set because my watch is dead a distance from the charger rings. I turn and turn it off and stand then kneel back on the bed to pinch the rod that holds the curtain I can now draw back. This is how I get my glimpse of day and if I do not make it as a wave, one motion rising from bed to curtain, the day begins its rot before I can prepare any sort of rebuttal. Whatever happens after this I can face, because I gathered the conviction in my neck and feet and knees and hands to turn and stand and kneel and pull the curtain back for sunlight. The muscles know that next are stairsteps. Feet pour creaks throughout the house. Hand takes smooth wood rail. Neck and knees bend for shallow doorframe. If my house were prairie the deer path would be plain through everything I do. But plastic coffee grinders do not wear away in ways that I can see, and wood and carpet are not grass. Even so, the paths carve into something real, and when I take to the couch, cross-legged, I hear the mounds and strips of tissue in my joints murmur about predictability, then give to what has yet again been asked of them.