I Forgot to Bend with My Knees

I Forgot to Bend with My Knees

The doctor pokes my back with precision, a well-practiced kneading of vertebrae circling like the wedding ring quilt my mother gave us. Winces pause her deliberate work —snags in fibers that ought to be ironed-cotton smooth. I should know better. I should not be here. Each time she picks at the pain, like I might a knot in a hem I’m lengthening, pain staccatos down my spine. Yesterday, I just bent over the dirty laundry basket and my vertebrae, small traitors, dug in heels like the sewing machine’s foot’s stumble when the thread’s gone out of its groove. A tangled mess jams it up. Makes it stop. I’m left a basket that I cannot carry. I’m left bent, muscles snagged in spasm. I should know better. I should have bent with my knees. And now, I’m left like a loved garment that’s too worn, which must be repurposed into something new. Stretched, snipped, washed with softener, like Kevin’s hole-pocked flannel I twisted and stuffed to make the cats a new bed. It’s soft, a comfort on winter afternoons, warmed by the fire and their furry purr. As the doctor marks my seams, fashions new postures, I wonder at what my body is yet to be.