Littoral

A dull ache has been sitting high in my back for weeks. Between the spine and scapulae, a low pressure.

When I focus on it, I want to cry. Some feeling I can’t yet place, riding just below the noise.

My instinct is to explain it: list the stressors, trace a cause, make it make sense. But the ache came first. The urge to cry came first. I don't have the explanation yet. I just have the ache.

There's relational tension I've been carrying that I can't resolve. A new, intense dating situation, tripping older responses in the body—a tightness at the throat, a catch in the chest—that arrive before I've clocked why. I just…notice it. Noticing doesn't stop it.

Underneath that: weeks of prep, travel, and uncertainty. Defending a thesis. Closing a practice, no job lined up. A lease ending at the end of the month. And my body, braced, with nowhere to put any of it down.

None of that is the cause, exactly. Just slow weight accumulating around the ache.

The body got there first. I'm still catching up to what it knows.