Unache

We ate and we drank and we decided to rest our bruised selves that afternoon. We were in the twilight world now, walking where no man had ever walked before, and we felt ourselves to be golden. It was good to stretch out and try to unache.

Slowly I slide my right hand under the pillow (I sleep on the right, window side) and push my left hand palm up along my thigh — a limp parody of a swimmer's crawl — and I begin to unache, from shoulder through to hand, from thigh down to feet, my back.

This last summer, though, though I hobbled round like a ninety-year-old, I felt I was on the mend; my leg would unstiffen and my back unache, and I'd be my old self.