Turn 135 of 233

Reflect on Kimo's growth and future. He can be anything he wants. Skip to Next Saturday for the run. Sina shows up in the same clothes as last week. She now understands why her brother never wore shirts. Its fun leaving my skin exposed. Though I guess you already knew that, she says to me looking at my bare form

Kimo is four weeks old and he is twenty pounds and change and the boy is growing and the growing is the only thing Lena thinks about now. Not the growing itself — the future of it. The trajectory. The line on Dr. Parekh's chart that goes up and to the right and doesn't stop. She sits on the balcony floor with him in her lap and the morning is warm and the boy is humming and his fists are curled and his feet are kicking and the feet are wide and the toes are curling and she thinks about what he could be. He could be anything. A lineman. A builder. A runner. A man who drives nails with hands like his father's and moves through the world with his mother's ease and his grandfather's frame. The wish gave Lena comfort in her body and the comfort is complete and now the wish is giving Kimo something — a body that grows without asking, a body that will be whatever it decides to be, and Lena's job is to let it.

The week passes in framing and food and the rhythm of the site and Kimo hums through all of it and the crew talks to him and Tuki brings extra food and the work improves and the improving is measurable and the measuring is the spreadsheet on Lena's phone. Saturday comes.

Five AM and the streetlights are still on and the air is warm and thick and the concrete is dark with dew. Lena is on the sidewalk stretching — the O-line stretch, the hips open, the hamstrings long, the belly resting on her thighs — and Kimo is in the stroller and the boy is asleep and the morning is quiet. The truck pulls up at four-fifty-eight and Sina gets out and the clothes are the same. The same tiny shorts. The same tiny sports bra. The same bare feet. The salt lines from last week are gone but the structure is the same — the broad shoulders, the thick thighs, the wide stance, the body that is built like her brother's body. Lena looks at her and the recognition is there again.

"You wore the same thing," Lena says.

"I didn't see a reason to change," Sina says. She stretches against the truck and the shoulders roll and the spine pops and the body is waking up.

"I ran thirty miles in these. I framed walls in these. I ate dinner in these. I slept in these. They work."

"They work."

Sina looks at Lena and the looking is the looking of a woman who is seeing something she has never seen — or is seeing it for the first time from the outside. Lena is naked. The tribal ink is black in the streetlight and the piercings catch the glow and the body is five hundred eighty pounds and the body is bare and the bareness is not exhibition. It is ease. It is the thing Lena stopped performing and started being.

"I understand now," Sina says. "Why Aleki never wore shirts. At the port. In the truck. At the house. I used to tell him to put something on. He'd just laugh."

She rolls her shoulders and the sports bra shifts and the belly is bare below it and the belly is soft and brown and strong.

"It's fun," Sina says. "Leaving your skin exposed. The air. The sun. The way everything just — sits. Nothing pulling. Nothing binding. Nothing telling you to be smaller than you are."

"I know," Lena says.

Sina looks at her and the look is the look from the kitchen in Gainesville — the recognition of a pattern, the moment where two women see the same thing from different angles and the thing is the same thing.

"Though I guess you already knew that," Sina says, and her eyes move across Lena's bare form — the ink, the piercings, the belly, the breasts, the thighs, the feet — and the movement is not assessment. It is acknowledgment.

"I've known that for a while," Lena says.

They run. Thirty miles. The pace is faster than last week and Sina holds it and the bare feet slap the concrete and the morning opens up and the city is empty and the running is the running and the structure holds.