Remade
In the early hours of the morning after the three-week anniversary of my fall, while running, I hear you get out of bed and creak open the bedroom door, letting in the moonlight, and I call, can you make me a piece of toast?
And when you return, minutes later, with the thickly buttered slice, you ask if I want another, and I say, yes, and could I have hot milk with honey and whisky too? You laugh and say, you must be feeling better.
And in that moment, I realise I am, even though I still can’t move my left arm, or raise my shoulder and my elbow joint is like a swollen mound of risen dough, but hard.
We heal in small ways. Bread, milk, and honey. Kindness. And through the magical science of blood clotting around the break, its meshwork of proteins plugging the gap, the immune system’s orchestra of inflammation, stem cells migrating from tissue, bone marrow and blood to form cartilage, more bone.
We are our own small miracles.
We remake ourselves over and over. Tell me now of your own renewal. How you
rose again from pain, loss or grief.
dislocation/fracture
we are so much more
than the bones of
ourselves
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