On the Decline

You’re on the decline, she said. I had come for a frozen shoulder. I didn’t even know that could happen. Apparently they just stop working, turn solid, you have to take your other arm, lift them up, plop them down and then they lay there useless. Right now one of my arm pits has deodorant on it, the other does not. The reason: estrogen feeds the joints. Right now, my moles have started to grow like magic beans, freshly watered. My daughter presses on them, like buttons, and makes a
boop sound. Right now the skin on my neck resembles a crepe and not in an appetizing way. Right now I cry when I touch my child’s hair and pretend there’s something in my eye. Right now I don’t care if I’m on my back or on top. You’d think a decline, a slope, would be easier. Like when you’re finally at the halfway point, you’ve turned to make your way home. It was all uphill and now you get to coast and just breathe. But right now I am recoiling, I am a cartoon stick drawing; a person, with arms wildly flailing back, sliding down, a straight line, into a grave… Later I do the dishes without complaining for once. I’m alive after all. Later when I look at myself in the mirror I take a deep breath before I lift my eyes and I have a feeling that it’s all for nothing. The water intake. The protein. The moisturizing. The lifting of heavy things. On the way to school, my kid, says to me,
I wish I could die to see how I like it there, and then if don’t like it, I could just come back. Right now, I don’t know what to tell her.

Sarah Davis writes micro prose and creative nonfiction. They live in Minneapolis.