I use all my senses to soak in the pleasure of how truly healed I am.

Taste goes first and comes back last. Anyone who has been properly ill knows the strange grey period where food is only texture, and then the specific afternoon when something — usually something ordinary, tomato soup, a strawberry — arrives at full volume and is almost too much.

Senses are how a body reports back in. Sound coming into focus, the smell of rain on a hot pavement, weight settling properly into a chair. Not proof of anything. Just the receipts, handed over one at a time.