Movements. Movements like the mesmerizing call of the waves, like footprints in the sand, like beatings of hearts and blood crashing through steady veins. Movements like sections of music, like the instinct of an earnest, inexperienced symphony-goer to clap between movements.

I find myself writing words that I have never imagined myself writing. Years have gone by that I have made the same monotonous movements. I wake up. I dress. I brush my teeth. I apply makeup. I live. I come home. I take off my makeup. I brush my teeth. I undress. I sleep. The last time I did not follow the rhythm of these movements, I was much younger. I am young now still, but I feel so old. Later, when I am old, I will look back at pictures taken today and I will think to myself, I was so young. But it is not later, and I am not old, and I feel old today.

For so long I wrote, I love. My fingers became used to making these movements. One long swoop, a flick; then, a series of loops with a single jagged edge in the middle. Muscle memory. Loving, to love. I wrote so many words that sounded like love. I wrote his name, full of slashes and edges. I wondered, did he become more mine every time I penned his name, put him in my font, placed him among my whirling sentences? How much of him could I take and dip in ink until he disappeared entirely from the world and lived only between my pages? Sometimes I wished it was so because I wanted to protect him from the world. Sometimes I wished it was so because I wanted to clap the covers shut and asphyxiate the parts of him that screamed their way into my mind.

No new movements today. It seems I am incapable of writing anything other than his name.

It seems I will never be able to chip away at him with my pen, even after filling volumes with him. The pages, open and breathing, flutter in the wind, and memories of him wave hello from my desk.

No new movements today, yet no old ones either. I sit. I wave back. I write nothing.

Someday, I will not wave. That day I will write with new loops and no edges. I will write, I am. One long swoop, a flick; then a loop, then two bumps, and as many loops and curlicues as I want in the middle. I will wake up in the center of my bed. I will dress my body and I will brush my singing, talking teeth. I will apply makeup, perhaps. And I will live. Then I will come home, or not. I will make new movements.

For now, I lie on one side of the bed. I am dizzy. I imagine another body on my mattress, but it is not there, and there is no weight that is compelling me to roll one way or another. I am utterly still.

Between waves there are lulls. Between footprints there is sand. Between heartbeats there is silence. And between movements, the audience bates its breath, utterly still.

I hold my breath now. My blood slams through my veins in endless motion as I pause in time, and the cells fill with oxygen, and they carry life all through my body, and they ready me for all possible movements.