PERHAPS {little personal}
There is a particular kind of exhaustion, that has nothing to do with sleep. It lives in the chest. It makes generosity difficult not because the heart is selfish, but because a well that has never been filled cannot be blamed for having nothing to offer. I know this about myself now. I hold it gently. I do not say it out loud. I have been sick in ways that nobody documented. Fevers that broke quietly. Nights the body waged its small wars and I was both the wounded and the nurse the one shaking and the one saying you will be fine, you have to be fine, there is no one coming so you have to be fine. Not once did I crumble. But I want you to understand what it costs this relentless, graceful self-rescue. What it takes from a person to be, for years, the only one who notices when she is not okay. Perhaps, in another universe, I arrive into rooms already belonging to them. I do not have to make myself light enough, small en...