Movement is neither effortless nor certain. Spastic CP is a neurological condition that disrupts the signals between brain and muscle, creating stiffness, rigidity, and involuntary contractions. Movement becomes a negotiation, each step a conversation between intention and limitation.
The hamstrings tighten too soon, bracing for movement that has not yet begun. Knees hesitate, caught between stiffness and release—never fully straight, never fully bent.
Tension settles deep, winding through the backs of my legs, twisting into the hamstrings like a knot that will not come undone. A knee locks mid-step. Feet drag. Movements jerk. The body does not resist in defiance. It resists because release is not the same as control.
In the sterile quiet of a Doctor’s office, hands press into tendons, measuring, stretching, noting. I become a case. A treatment plan emerges: four injections per leg. Four months of silenced nerves. Spasticity gone? Maybe. Maybe not.
The needle presses in. The machine crackles with static, a hum caught between white noise and electricity. They call it spasticity, the misfiring nerves made audible. Each pulse of current sends muscles flaring, twitching, resisting. Then the injection.
Cold spreads deep. The hamstrings should loosen within hours. The knees, caught between tightness and release, should find a middle ground. Yet expectation does not always match reality.
Sometimes, the body resists less. Other times, it does not resist at all. A knee that once held firm buckles. A leg that once pulled tight gives way. Muscles do not just relax. They let go. What was once certain is now unsteady. Steps falter, strain, slip.
I wait for the return of tightness, rigidity, movement—but it does not come. Nine months pass. It becomes necessary to relearn movement in the absence of what was once familiar. To wait for sensations, though no one can say if feeling will return.
Waiting is not a pause. It is a stretch of time, filling space, forcing adaptation. Movement is more than motion—it is expectation, rhythm, trust in the body’s response. The poem below explores what happens when that rhythm breaks.
Between Stasis and Step — The Poem
By Kerry Ann Wiley
Waiting is not empty.
It takes shape, fills space,
lingers in what was.
No before. No after.
Only time stretched thin,
where a step is no longer certainty
but a question.
Somewhere between resistance and surrender,
this is not stillness,
but something close.
The night does not break.
It takes.
It presses in, quiet and full,
heavy with what was,
what wasn’t,
what never found its way to words.
Movement is not gone.
It lingers,
threaded through what remains,
folded into absence.
Footsteps vanish into rain.
Breath unwinds into dark.
Nothing moves except time,
slow, indifferent,
dragging what remains through the cold.
Even beneath the surface, something lifts.
Even the lost hear the pull of their name.
Even now,
wind, tide, shifting sky
trace something just beyond the edges.
Not mercy.
Not promise.
Not yet.
But somewhere, still,
a thread, a spark,
a hunger that refuses to close its hands.
And that will be enough,
until enough becomes more.
Recovery and the Space Between
Botox cannot erase years of tension. It interrupts it. It creates a space where movement might return—if the balance is right. If the dosage is precise. If the body adapts as expected.
Expectation is not certainty. The risk of Botox is not just whether the injections will work. It is trust. Relinquishing control to an unseen drug, measured in units and vials. Balanced on guesses and adjustments.
After treatment, the body waits. It lingers between hope and hesitation, between relief and uncertainty. Sensation shifts. Muscles quiet. Yet the question remains: What will settle? What will return? What will be lost?
When the body does not respond as it should, when waiting stretches from weeks into months, adaptation becomes something else. The absence of movement becomes its own weight, its own kind of resistance.
This is what nine months of recovery feels like. Time slows, dragging everything with it. Each day feels like a breath held too long, a hesitation stretched past its breaking point. Recovery does not feel like progress. It feels like grasping for a threshold that has dissolved.
Until movement, hesitant but returning, becomes its own momentum once more. It lingers in muscle memory, in the quiet rhythm of balance—waiting to return.
Poem Analysis
The poem opens with the assertion that waiting is not passive—it takes up space. Even in stillness, something remains: sensations, the imprint of movement that once was.
The line “No before. No after.” disrupts linear time. Recovery exists in limbo, where movement is no longer a guarantee but a question.
“Somewhere between resistance and surrender,” speaks to the tension of uncertainty. The body does not fully move, but it does not fully stop. It lingers.
“The night does not break. It takes.” Darkness becomes a metaphor for loss, absence pressing in. The inability to move is not just physical—it is emotional. The weight of unspoken experiences fills the silence.
“Movement is not gone.” Here, the poem shifts. While motion is absent in the present, it still exists in memory, in the subconscious patterns the body once knew.
“Footsteps vanish into rain.” This deepens the contrast between motion and stillness. Steps dissolve into something intangible, leaving only time—dragging everything forward, indifferent.
“Even beneath the surface, something lifts.” This is the first sign of hope. Though movement is lost, something stirs—perhaps muscle memory, will, or something deeper than physical ability. Even in uncertainty, there is a pull toward motion.
“Not mercy. Not promise. Not yet.” There is no certainty of recovery. The waiting is neither a gift nor an assurance. It simply is.
Even in limitation, something lingers—a refusal to close one’s hands around absence. Even in uncertainty, there is a thread, a spark, a pull that does not let go.
Closing Thoughts
Movement is more than motion—it is certainty, rhythm, trust. When that trust falters, what remains is harder to define. The space between stillness and motion is not empty. It holds tension, uncertainty, the persistence of what once was.
Between Stasis and Step explores this in-between, where the body lingers but does not move with ease. Waiting is not passive; it is something tangible. It carries the weight of absence, the slow drag of time, and the quiet pull of hope that refuses to be extinguished.
Recovery is not linear. It moves in fragments, shaped by tension and release. The body does not simply let go—it recalibrates, searching for balance where none exists. Muscles, once rigid, loosen beyond expectation. Stability shifts. A step that once held firm wavers.
Stillness is not the absence of motion. It carries its own weight, its own kind of resistance. The muscles quiet, but tension lingers. Expectation wavers. Time stretches.
In that stretch of waiting, something stirs. Movement shifts at the edges, unsteady but present. It lingers—until, finally, it returns.
