What Precision Costs
On what we call grace and what it actually required.
They called it grace.
They meant
the absence of visible effort.
But grace
is not the absence of effort.
It is effort
so complete
it has forgotten
how to look like trying.
She had been practicing
since before she had words
for what she was practicing.
The body learns
what the mind
is not yet ready
to understand.
It stores it
in the muscles.
In the spine.
In the particular way
a head turns
when it has turned
the same way
ten thousand times
and knows
exactly where it is going
without being told.
That is not talent.
That is the cost
of deciding
that something
was worth
the repetition.
She decided early.
She has not
finished paying.
The arms
do not rise easily.
They rise
because she asked them to
ten thousand times before tonight
and they learned
to trust the asking.
That is the thing
about the body —
it does not perform
for the audience.
It performs
for the history
of every time
it was asked
and complied.
Every motion
is a conversation
between now
and every before.
The trail of light
is not decoration.
It is the record
of everywhere
the arm has been
in the seconds
before this one.
The body
remembers everything
it has ever been asked to do.
It just does not always
tell you
what it cost
to remember.
