Before you fold forward, scoot your leg out a bit wider to create space for the baby. As you lengthen upward first, reclaim the space in your spine between each vertebra. Good. Now move forward. forward. forward. and down.
Space. Shift to make more. Lengthen to reclaim.
***
The three bedrooms in our house are cozy, with tiny closets and capacity to hold beds and dressers and that's about it. With another baby on the way, I'm having a very hard time imagining the three big girls and all their stuff sharing one space. Some days, I'm not sure how one more body is going to fit in this house.
But on other days, there's this:
It goes on for a half hour, maybe more. There's the loud, loud counting -- a chorus of two with one lagging, learning echo. There's the pounding of feet as they look in one room, then the next, then the next. There's the squealing and laughter and shouts of found you, found you. There are new hiding places and old ones reused again and again. This game doesn't get old. There is always enough space.You just have to find it.
***
It was one of those nights. The kind that only happen once in awhile these days, but which used to be my day upon day: all those piles and piles of nights interrupted, in the very palpable past. The shadows under my eyes still haven't faded.
So I meet this day with dread stuck in the corners of my eyes, hard bits of solidified sleep that don't want to loosen.
I can't handle a life of nights like that. I'm thinking ahead, of course.
It's not going to be like that. He's pouring his coffee and doesn't look up.
Yes, it will. I want to worry. And I want him to worry, too.
Cup full, he looks at me. You're right. It will. If you think like that.
***
The pool is cold. In this dream, at least, I don't know how to swim. I stand on the edge and take the first step down, then another. Then another. When the water reaches my chin, I stop. I cannot go any further. I'm paralyzed.
But here is how it could be. It will be. It is.
At that same edge I exhale everything. What I inhale is air, not tar, and my lungs lengthen so the breath fills not just my chest but my belly and my sinuses and my feet and my fingernails and the fraying ends of my hair. So when I dive into the water, I touch the bottom with both palms before pushing back to the surface. Bouyant. Afloat. And it doesn't matter anymore if I cross the length of the pool in this moment or not. Right here is very nice.
***
I pull into the driveway after yoga class. The porch light shines in a dim semicircle, highlighting the front door. But before I go in, I stand in the dark and look up at the black space above me. At the small sliver of infinity domed over my head.
And then it caches my eye, like it always does -- the moon. Somewhere near half again tonight, but in a different cycle than last time. The crescent curve angles upward so the thing appears as a cup brimming with blackness, holding onto whatever negative space it can. Tomorrow, it will grow, pushing outward, claiming that space with light, on and on until it's round and full and ready to go back and back and birth a new moon all over again. Shifting phases. Shrinking and growing. Always reclaiming or being reclaimed.
Space.
