Stillness / Bounce / Measure - 7 minute and 28 seconds of sunshine

 

Stillness / Bounce / Measure

7 minutes and 28 seconds of sunshine

Form: memoir poem, lived moment Energy: immediate, bodily, hormonal, sensory Location: your garden chair (aka back door step), your oven clock, your brain Timeframe: one afternoon Focus: your internal movement vs your external stillness Truth: “This is what it feels like to be me today.”

I. Stillness Attempt

The sun is out — 

the kind of sun a menopausal woman needs like a vitamin —

and I try to sit still long enough to feel it, if I’m lucky.

Before I even reach the garden, I’m moving things,

telling myself don’t start this,

as I stare out the window, don’t do this, 

already doing it.

It’s calling me.

As I walk out the back door, 

I glance at the oven clock — 

the only reason I know the time at all.

I sit in the garden chair.

I try to let the sun land on me

I try to stay.

II. Bounce

Four seconds in the garden and the questions begin:

suncream, 

hair up, 

plants, 

pots, 

hearts in the tree, 

tree about to bloom,

disco ball catching light,

cars,

aeroplane,

magpie

clouds, 

legs, 

coffee, 

audiobook, 

mindfulness.

My brain ricochets and my body obeys —

picking up, brushing off, cleaning cobwebs, circling the house like a restless orbit.

Inside, outside, inside again.

Everything separate,

 everything simultaneous.

III. Measure

I’m hyperfocus or no focus — nothing in between.

This brain is only silent as I drop of to sleep — if I’m lucky.

I know my numbers:

7 minutes 28 seconds of TV on a normal day, 14 minutes 38 on a good brain and hormone balance one.

Enough time to turn the TV on, 

eat my tea, 

call it rest. 

And I’m up.

It’s not ideal, but it’s me.

I need to move. I need to do.

11:11, 13:13 — time in numbers that don’t mean anything, but the glance pulls me into the next thing, and the next.

Sometimes my momentum 

wanes and the pendulum swings —

because here, in this body, in this brain,

I don’t always know what to be.

.

I listen, and I move — 

to my body’s internal clock, 

its motion‑sensing pulse, 

sometimes beating together,

sometimes poles apart.