my buddy put another plate on the bar in his basement and i thought he was taking the piss, because that used to be a weight we both just looked at. i got it up, not pretty, and my shoulders felt huge for about ten seconds until i caught myself in the little window and looked exactly the same. carrying stuff at the yard has changed something though. later i was trying to sleep with the fan on and could still feel my hands wanting to close around the bar, that tight warm feeling across the palms. my right shoulder did its usual click when i rolled over. no pain, just a fairly loud opinion.

i keep thinking about how much of a day disappears between a night shift and the next one. on paper there's loads of time, and i write these plans like i'm going to cook, see my girlfriend, lift and read a whole chapter before work. then i stand in the kitchen at three in the afternoon eating a banana while mum's leaving for her shift and somehow that's the entire overlap. i drew our hours next to each other on the back of an envelope. wasn't trying to optimize our relationship or whatever. i just wanted to find one evening we could get takeout and both be awake for it.

my girlfriend came over after her deli shift and fell asleep halfway through telling me about a customer. i was annoyed, which sounds shitty because she was clearly exhausted, but i'd been saving up this whole story from work and had pictured us actually having an evening. then she woke up just enough to ask if i'd eaten and i felt properly loved and still a bit annoyed at the same time. i didn't wake her to explain that. i'm usually good for a twelve-minute explanation of whatever i'm feeling, but watching her sleep on my arm, all i really wanted was for my arm to stop going numb.