{fiction. metaphor. you pick}
She doesn't need a doctor to tell her. She knows what's wrong. Her heart labors. She can feel it working hard against what has been laid down over all these years of living. Her body is a map of blocked roads.
{today. every day}
She stands begging at the barrier of toy bins across the doorway. I'm keeping the baby in but she seems to think we're blocking her out. I've seen her jump this high, over other things -- she's an agile dog. But she wants me to let her in.
{crunching through morning frost}
On the gravel path, my usual route in my usual woods. Neon tape tied to the underbrush off to the left -- a rough hewn inlet I've never seen. I turn. Water crunches frozen under my feet under the brown trampled grasses. This way would have been blocked for me a couple weeks ago, a muddy marshy mess impassible in these street shoes. But today I get through. And then the landscape opens up and I'm at the edge of the water and the cranes and the geese take flight at the sound of my approach. My breath is frozen but for a second it stops.
{on the road}
There's been construction between home and home home all summer. Double fines in work zones, speed limit down at 55. It's a tiresome stretch of highway that feels slow like a log jam in a once roaring river.
They're not done but I guess they're calling it close enough for now. The machinery is in the median when we travel for this holiday, but they let us go as fast as we're used to. We fly, unblocked. It only makes a few minutes but it feels like we get there faster.
{analysis}
It's me who's blocked, veins full of junk, unable to jump over the smallest barrier. I'm waiting for something to move or freeze or finish and move aside. I can be patient. But I also know how to make my own magic, a medicine I can take. I am an alchemist.
