A simmering discomfort persists. I live inside it, knocking softly at the limits of a body never quite mine. Often, I imagine shedding this skin of competence, of expected gestures, but time does not loosen it yet. Questions and requests arrive. I answer. The skin I mean to outgrow is made of small, capable acts. Sometimes I wish someone else would lift them. Once upon a time, when someone would say you do too much, my ears would perk up. Perhaps this ailing was only my stubbornness, refusing any other way? But then I’d look again, and there were lives set down everywhere, a scatter of need underfoot. So, I pick up what I can and carry on. I dream sometimes of bearing witness to another carrier, who is too busy doing the work to announce themselves, whose very presence at my side would be a comfort, whose humor in the effort would be the best laugh I ever had in my life.
ongoing
regarding capacities