I’m sitting on the stained, black mesh step stool in my kitchen. My fingers pruned from sweat type this out. My apartment smells of cleaning product, ripe grass, grape shochu, and age.

I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m not the man I thought I would be.

I look in the mirror at a sweat drenched shirt— I open to reveal the mass of droplets and scars and stains of a life that has been lived in alternating sprints and jogs.

I go into the doctor on Wednesday for a full physical.

I only have two real questions for them— is my heart okay? And how bad is the damage in my left knee?

You think of the aches and pains you carry around— knowing you can bear it until you can’t.

They aren’t always physical.

But this one is. The knee i joyously bounced upon hardwood racquetball courts with Henry during my final years of college as we played a never ending game of 1v1 soccer.

It came at a price— one that driving a stubborn manual car didn’t help.

I expect to hear there’s a tear in a ligament on Wednesday.

But I’m not sure there’s much to do.

On the other hand,

My heart?

The boy turned man— from a line of men that have almost uniformly died from heart attacks?

He knows bad news caught early is better than painful commiserations after the fact.

The doctors have always said I have a strong heart. I wonder if it comes part and parcel with the big rib cage.

The potential to be a stouter man then the thin wisp I’ve been for years.

I sit in this deep water heat. This pre-arrival preparation— for the typhoon that draws near.

I think of the timeless display of fireworks in the sky last night.

Celestial sparkles mixing with early night winds and the distant flash of emergency lights.

I think how this has become normal— in a span of time that still fees it can stretch back with one hand to grab the moments of my arrival.

My sister told me I won’t know how I’ve changed until I return to my old world.

And change I have.

I sit here on this stool— waiting to finish my thoughts before I clean this apartment.

Likely to listen to a short history podcast or learn some more Italian.

I sit and think about how I didn’t have a through-line from one dream to the next.

How easy it can be to feel outside of the world’s movement.

But I look at these pruned hands— before they return to form.

I look at the blurry outlines of the shapes in this hallway kitchen— and I think of the man I’ve become and how he couldn’t be farther from who I thought I’d be— while still being the same.

I think of that phosphorescent spark in the dead of night. The moment between beats of the heart.

The quiver between question and answer.

And I think of what it is to live.

What it is I remember the whispers of every lesson I’ve ever learned and forgotten return to me.

All I have to give— is everything.