on the ice, every morning

It is five or six in the morning, and while most children your age are still asleep, you, homeschooled and made for this, lace up alone in a rink with no one in it. You step onto the ice and everything else falls away, the blade crackling beneath you, the hush of the empty rink holding its breath. You take your warm-up laps, bend your knees, tap your thighs, and wait to be called to compete. When your name comes you become someone else, entering the character your program asks for, speaking through your hands, your fingers, your legs. You loved the artistry most, the way it was an extension of yourself, precise and alive. That cold crackling world you can still hear lives now as sea breeze, driftwood and pear.