I've heard quite a bit about the so-called wonders of epsom salts. Today I am testing them out.

My feet hurt. Orthotics don't help, and exercise especially doesn't help. And today involved special punchy, admirably athletic motions with the arms while on The Elliptical, which obviously foretells wicked pain in the foot-pads. I haven't mentioned wicked pain in the foot-pads as a new thing, because of... you know... other things (too much griping). But nevertheless, wicked pain in the foot-pads is not really a new thing. Thus, the epsom salts.

I need more hot water.

I'm going to boil more hot water.

The boiling is now happening.

Why do feets go awry, really?

Mine have been going awry technically since I was born (my mother was told my feet were deformed at birth, and so taped certain toes together throughout my childhood, first the big one and second, then the second and third, sometimes a stick in between, and still I remember the white sticky adhesive of the white tape). But they've been going more awry for the past four or so months. I don't think it's bunions. I have orthotics, so likely it's not arch. It's hard to tell.

Maybe it's just that our bodies break down, and that's what happens. That's what happened with my back, and nothing I could figure out actually managed to change it, although yoga helped, and bending into helps... learning to accept.

Sometimes I get angry, like when someone asks if I'm into softball and then acts like my back is an excuse. Like I don't love softball, and moving, and dance, and the myriad of ways the body is made to be only alive in motion.

But sometimes pain is something both to work through, and to accept as a hindrance. I can't twist, and I'm okay with that (mostly); still, I really really do strive to live, even when it involves twisting. I got all twistish on the elliptical today, and then in front of class (realizing how much, once I'm there, I like be teaching... like a drama student who tells herself that plumbing is an admirable profession), and then in the greenhouse, planting, opening packages in the mail, thinking of poetry and squeezing myself into the pair of ragged pants I've had for 15 years, since college: squeezing myself in and sucking my gut so as to notice my legs might still be active and my butt not out of commission and my stomach... still, barely, just barely, suckable... like I still have a chance, if I just twist a little. I mean, I still can twist, surely so can anyone.

It just hurts.

The water boiled.

Wet footprints from the living room to kitchen and back again.

Pouring the boiling water, trying to avoid splashing on the dog.

Easing my feel in slowly, very slowly.

But damn, if that hot water and epsom salt isn't nice. I'm wiggling. My toes. And arches. And ankles. And the rest.

And I'm thinking of how poetry seems like all I can handle right now. And simultaneously all I could ask for. Poetry and epsom salts, who'd a' thought?