most people are always starting over. monday. the first of the month. the version of herself that begins tomorrow. there is always a line being drawn, a past self to be corrected, a better one waiting on the other side of enough effort.

she used to live like that.

every return to the practice was proof of having lapsed. the count reset, the slate wiped, the number begun again from one.

it took years to see she had it backwards. nothing had lapsed. the body she came back to was the same body, kept. not improved in her absence, not diminished, held in place by everything she had already done. the practice was never a thing she kept failing to maintain. it was the maintenance itself.

she stopped arriving and started returning. to arrive is to have come from somewhere worse. to return is to come back, across a long stretch of time, to something that was always hers and never went anywhere.

the body remembers what it has been kept at.

she returns to it, and it is there.