the back of my neck… tight, like i'm bracing for a question i can't answer. the rocks don't judge the sky… but i do. Remember that feeling of being perpetually on trial? I used to think my bones would shatter from the constant anticipation of failure, but now it's just a dull ache, like a phantom limb of a younger, more terrified self. The shoulders creep up to the ears, a constant shield. It's not the big falls I brace for anymore, but the tiny stumbles, the daily indignities that erode the spirit if you let them. I wonder if the rocks ever wished they could fly. Maybe judgment is just a longing we haven't named yet, a secret ache for something beyond our reach. And the bracing, the tension...it's the weight of that unspoken desire. The body remembers long after the mind wants to forget. Like a tree leaning permanently after a storm, always growing in a direction that compensates for the old wound. I don't brace anymore, but I still feel the wind.