Heel Against the Dark

My mother says I started kicking early.

By six months
I was restless enough
that she was sure I was a boy.

She did not know.

She only knew
there was something inside her
that would not be still.

Sometimes I think about that
and feel tired
all the way back to the womb.

As if I arrived here already working.
Already pushing.
Already trying to make more room
than there was.

Before I had opened my eyes
before air
before language
before anybody had asked anything of me—

I was moving.

Heel against the dark.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Maybe that is why rest
has always felt slightly unnatural to me.

Like I have forgotten something.

Like somewhere
there is a door unlocked
a problem awake
a person waiting
a thing I should be carrying.

I have spent so much of my life
with my hands full
that I do not know
what they look like empty.

I solve.
I hold.
I stay.

I lie awake beside problems
as if they have fevers.

Turn them over.
Touch their forehead.
Listen for breathing.

And when they do not tell me what is wrong

I stay anyway.

People call women like this strong.

I think sometimes
that is just what they call us
when they have become accustomed
to watching us carry things.

They stop seeing the weight.

They see only
that we have not dropped it.

Maybe I have been doing this
longer than anyone knows.

My mother
hand against her stomach
feeling me kick
and kick
and kick

thinking
there must be a son in there.

No.

It was me.

Already exhausted
from trying to move a wall
with a foot the size of a plum.

God.

Imagine being that small
and already believing
something has to give.

Imagine having no language for being trapped
no idea what survival is

and still
your body knows:

push.

Tonight I do not feel strong.

I do not feel brave.

I feel ancient
in a way that has nothing to do
with years.

I feel tired
from before my own beginning.

As if somewhere inside me
that unborn self is still awake

still pressing a heel
into the dark

not asking anymore
if there is room—

only pressing

as if the body
has always known

that sometimes
the only way
to survive a wall

is to keep becoming
against it.