Gait

I walk as if the ground were sure,

a practiced art of looking pure.

My body keeps its debts concealed,

no outward crack, no broken shield.

What hurts is quiet, tucked from view,

a private map I travel through.

A stick attends me, plain and thin,

not badge nor plea, but checking in.

It learns the floors before I do,

tests every step for something true.

It’s not for show, not grand or brave—

it’s how I bargain with the pave.

They watch me stand, then watch me sit,

and think the change is counterfeit.

“You walked just fine,” they softly say,

as if the body must replay

the same performance, scene by scene,

obedient, neat, and evergreen.

I count my strength in measured loads,

in doorways wide, in resting nodes.

My body cries in silent groans—

the human skeleton has 208 bones—

I plan my exits long before

I know what I have entered for.

The moon pulls oceans twice a day,

a silent force that won’t explain its way.

I carry that like I carry pain:

a steady pull, unseen, arcane.

No noise, no flare to mark its might,

just consequence, both day and night.

The tide goes out, the tide comes in—

no one demands it justify the spin.

So when I pause, or lean, or sway,

it’s not collapse, it’s how I stay.

My illness does not need a sign,

a brace, a chart, a warning line.

It lives in rhythm, not in show,

in when I stop, in when I go.

I walk. I rest. I walk once more.

The world still doubts what that is for.