Lilly

In the spring I play two different roles. Right now I am playing two different roles. I am sitting on a yoga mat in my room, “stretching,” a mathematics file open on my laptop in front of me. My legs are yowling, but tomorrow I have to run two miles in 16 minutes and be ready for sprints at the end, no excuses, no setbacks. My head is spinning, but this calculus assignment is due at the start of the school day tomorrow and my formula for the hypervolume of an n-sphere is still off by a factor of three. I am playing two different roles, but one is so physical and the other so mental that they do not declare war in my body or my brain, and this is how I escape.

(The volume of an n-sphere is proportional to r^n where r is the radius of the n-sphere. For even values of n, pi is raised to the power of n/2. For odd values of n, pi is raised to the power of (n-1)/2…)

This is how I escape: When my body is tired my mind can still come alive, and recently it does, because I am remembering how much I love math. There is no moment more satisfying than finally seeing the pattern, the last piece finally clicking into place. My formula is not finished but it is so close, it is so close and I made it this far on my own, how can I stop now? I look at the clock. 10:30 PM. The night is young, I think, congratulate myself on a successful poeticism, back to work. Check my work, find the factor of three. (Fail to find the factor of three.) Check again. Check again. (Check again.)

(“You only get one moment in this life to be great / And you give it your all despite what it takes,” says Angel Haze, and feet are thudding in one-two-three-four rhythm and blood pounds from ear to ear and there is no stopping not now not yet…)

This is how I escape: Running requires the mental fortitude to stop thinking. It is the natural roll and flex of two ankles as they hit the ground, one whole and healthy and one sewn up but strong again. It is breath heavy in my lungs and thick from the cold air and it is the slight wheeze in my chest after—not enough to worry about, nothing worth my inhaler, just the rasp of a workout well run. (My soccer coach sends out his nine-week preseason fitness plan six weeks late. “The idea behind this program is not whether you can do these exercises,” his email reads, “But that you simply do them.” I set my jaw. There will be no “cannot.”) I will not settle for the bench this time, not this year. He wants 16 match-fit players in three weeks. I will be one of those 16 and it will not kill me. I will be stronger for it. ♦