To Be Alive

    Her hands ached, both of them. From the clenching no doubt--unclench, then clench; fist, tight fist, really tight fist, then the ease of the muscle and tendons loosening, lengthening, becoming four fingers and a thumb again.

  

  She liked thinking about what she couldn't see, but knew was there--the bones, veins, tendons, and the hundreds, no thousands, millions of organisms keeping her alive, whole communities of bacteria, viruses, even fungi, getting up when she did, well, most of them, she assumed, while she made a cup of coffee, waited for the paper, checked email before the day really started.

    She woke early so they had to too, the day shift at least, the ones who kept her eyes lubricated, her head upright, her blood moving and warm. When she got up, the fungi were up too...if they even slept.

 

   Her back hurt in the morning these days--diminished help from the invisibles or the inevitable protest of age? Well, at least, she, and they, weren't dead. That was the best quality of pain: it was uncomfortable, even painful you might say--ha ha--but she and her multitude of organisms were still alive, still kicking. She should be grateful....and she was, even though she generally rebuffed any order or even suggestion that she express gratitude for discomfort. It was life...and then death...pain--discomfort--disappearance for them all.

 

   Well, enough of that. She stretched her fingers..and both thumbs, rubbed shea cream on each knuckle, spread the length of every finger, admired the soft glow of the massaged skin, made a fist, a second fist, and said, Yes, we will all live another day.

Halleluja!