this inner life

All day long I am training.

In my head, I am squeezing the bar, feeling

the good drag across the thighs

the sock-it-to-me dig into the ribcage

and then the explosion

nipped quick, ass to grass.

The push.

I lean back and shrug

in my office chair

while we’re talking,

so slight you cannot see,

but it’s the movement

the pattern

the neurokinetic pathways

I’m paving as we speak.

I am thinking of how the bar feels

in my hands.

I am hearing the swell of music

from my speakers

when I drive under the bar.

A chunk of day down.

I’m making the money

that will pay my coach

and pay for the airline ticket

to the big meet

and buy more chalk.

Keyboard clicking,

inbox filling,

to-do list with bullet points.

I glance at my palm and it centers me.

It’s my hands that bear witness to my inner life,

the calluses and torn blisters,

the strange brown marks set in over time.

Steal a moment on the computer

to watch lifters like me

bend under the bar,

throw up the weight

tumble or triumph

and teach.

A chunk of day down.

I am eating to make sure

I will have energy at 5:30.

I am drinking water

So my body will be ready.

As I straighten my collar in the mirror,

I plan what will happen tonight

in the gym,

rehearse the movement I need to learn

replay the words

I need to hear

from fellow lifters

from my coach.

Replay the emotion

I let him see,

that somehow he understood.

Know I scraped the ground

and he helped me back up.

This struggle

this inner life,

it is comfortable alone

it is vulnerable revealed

and from this, growth can come.

This inner life

intensely private,

intensely shared,

intensity breeding intensity

Drives me.

Drives lifters like me.

There is lifting,

there is thinking about lifting,

and there is interruption in-between.

Weight over my head

This is life. This is real life.

One-hundred pounds

is always one-hundred pounds.

When the house is quiet

I like to turn off the TV

and go to bed early

to be in the dark,

lost in the lifting,

the gym,

the lifting talk

from the day

from last week

from what is to come

and what is to be.