MRI

That's a great knee, the doctor says, laughing, before he tells you they need to look closer for whatever criminals are lurking in its depths. You ask can I keep running like it was all the matters, and in that moment you realize it is. He speaks sunshine into the spring afternoon, smiles blossoms at your broken bones, everything seems possible and you walk down the Bowery with your jacket off. 

You know it's happening, well before your spine has caught up. There's a lightness in your step, a breath in your lung that deceives you, reveals the returning life before you dare fully utter it out loud. You try not to look directly at it, try not to let yourself give into it, lest it get scared off at your enthusiasm. Joy is skittish like that, before it gains its footing, before it sinks its teeth into your shoulder and holds on through the shakes. You have been skittish too, but every now and then you stretch your fingers into the earth, let yourself exist and remain, and that's alright. 

Another winter passes when you did not die. It is over now. 

Now you are allowed to live.