Muscles quiver in perpetual tension

Ready constraint that that stirs the horse before its race. Suspense filled cages waiting for the starting sound. 

Feet painting dusty anxious steps. 

Eyes melded to the gate.

Heart longing for flung wide movement that signals release.

Next to me, neighbors mirror this push.  Every individual trapped in a barred home that once held rest and reprieve. Walls morphed through external pressure and internal struggle.

How I long for the fire of this gun. The noise that announces the race has resumed and the space is there to once again spread my wings in an all-out run. 

Confined in this barrier, my fists pound rebellious reaction.

Life is outside, out there, beyond the gate and wait. 

Exhaling frustration I glance through the bars, eyes catching a neighbor with earth brown hair in a knotted crown.

• 

A round belly is rhythmically rubbed by gold-brown hands. Her chin is tilted towards the button on her belly and as her gentle caress smoothes the surface an easy smile blooms.

Locked eyes signal womanly understanding. She is carrying life and no matter what size cage, no matter how long the wait, growth inside continues taking place.

Man cannot regulate.

Women cannot dictate.

Oceans cannot create this kind of love.

It is one born of our flesh and blood.

The essence of our personhood nesting within a safe cocoon.

Life.

It exists even in quarantine.

Even under restriction and protest.

Through presidents and viruses. 

Through riot and war.

Through policy change and social restructure.

Through six feet of tension and hidden masked faces.

Through locked up business and table tight dinner places.

Life in every inhale.

Sweet existence, even in the abnormal restraint of these crazy days.

Newness formed in the secret place.

Where the only proof is expansion and increased affection.

Where mystery is championed and connection occurs before eye contact.

She knows what I so raucously rebel against. 

That life is in the waiting. 

That good things grow in silent spaces and to leave too soon is to miss the magic.

She knows that your strength is displayed once those gates fling wide but it was developed here on the quiet side.

This silence so vulnerably exposes what was hidden by the race pace life. The unnerving quiet sets an intimate table for soul soup and spiritual desert.

Maybe my rebellion stems from this uncomfortable dinner party. One I didn’t ask to attend and one I long to exit with the force of a released racehorse. 

One more glance at her beautiful smile, a flick of my eyes to the presence of precious un-hindered life, and my restless heart settles. 

This awkward dinner is shared with some beautiful company. Neighbors next to and around me. All people with me. Her pregnant presence offers a new perspective to this forced rest. A new thing growing in the shadows of confinement.

Beauty blooms in quiet places and growth does not stop when the pace is slowed. Settling into the quiet of a forced winter does not mean I will never see the summer sun in all her beauty or run through the orange fire of fall. Spring will bloom again and just maybe she just needed a little longer to grow her seeds for the next season.

HMU: Kristie Wilson https://www.instagram.com/kristiewilsonmua/

Model: Rachel https://instagram.com/rachelledene?utm_medium=copy_link