The Rhythm

It leaves the way a song leaves.

Not all at once,

but thinning at the edges, overplayed.

My inner chamber forgets it was ever there.

I tell myself it’s gone.

That whatever moved me

has finally moved on.

I lose the rhythm.

Then it finds me again.

At first, it’s quiet.

Days stack without weight.

I move through them cleanly, efficiently,

like someone doing all the right things

for no particular reason.

The old impulse sits still.

The call to build, to chase, to hunt

muted, like my speaker turned low

in another room.

I wonder if this is what remains.

If age smooths everything out

until nothing rises enough

to move you.

I worry, I lost the rhythm.

Then it finds me again.

It doesn’t return the way I expect.

Not with clarity,

not with some resounding declaration

but more like a small disturbance.

A thought that lingers longer than it should.

Restlessness that refuses to settle.

Something taps on the inside of my brain,

like it remembers me,

before I remember it.

And then without warning

it’s there.

Like stepping back onto a dance floor

after standing still too long,

and realizing your body

never forgets the beat.

It moves through me.

not asking,

not explaining.

just taking hold.

I lose the rhythm.

Then it finds me again.

These day I notice what’s changed.

It’s sharper now.

Less patient.

More aware that time is not endless,

that every return carries

a little more urgency.

But it’s also deeper.

Less about proving something,

more about being pulled toward it

because I have no real choice.

I used to think losing rhythm was failure.

A sign I had drifted too far,

missed something essential.

Now I see.

The losing is part of it.

The silence.

It's what lets the music return.

So I stop trying to hold it in place.

I stop naming it,

stop demanding it stay.

Because it won’t.

It leaves.

It returns.

It leaves again.

And somewhere in that cycle

in the fading,

in the silence

is the rhythm of my life.