The Body Learns Its Name

Klara Kulikova for Unsplash

THE BODY LEARNS ITS NAME

I am not yet an adult when it happens, but old enough to recognize the room as ordinary and the moment as anything but. Afternoon light lies across the floor like a held breath. My body, usually a tool I steer without wonder, suddenly becomes a landscape with its own weather. Heat gathers, then focus, then a strange listening—every nerve leaning forward as if the world has whispered my name. I am present in myself in a way I’ve never been before, awake to the pulse beneath thought.

Sensation rises not as a single spark but as a tide, a swelling intelligence that teaches me its grammar as it speaks. There is pressure and release, a bright ache that turns musical, a rushing warmth that blurs the edges of time. I feel salt at the back of my tongue, soft rasp of fabric, quiet hum of blood doing its ancient work. When the crest breaks, it is not loud; it is profound—an inward bell that rings and leaves silence richer than before.

Afterward, the room looks newly minted. I am changed, not by shame or triumph, but by knowledge: that pleasure is not an indulgence but a sense, as real as sight or sound, and that my body has been keeping this secret patiently. I sit in afterglow, breathing, amazed at the simple fact of being alive inside myself, aware that a door has opened and the house I live in is larger than I thought.

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Ordinary room—

heat gathers slowly, tides break;

the body wakes whole.

Shared with Dverse Poets Pub for the first haibun of 2026!

©2026 Christopher Reilley 

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