I notice the sensation of my foot meeting the ground..Mary

Mary Rose Reynolds

Christy says to breathe, do not forget to breathe. She says to move through the air like different animals, cobras, dogs, cats, pigeons. She says to melt our bellies into the hard wooden floor. Christy says imagine you are in a temple on the hillside where the trees are so old they are spirits. I imagine it.  See their twisted gnarled trunks as timeworn faces, their branches as dozens of wrinkled arms reaching ever upward, their soft leaves as thin strands of silver hair bouncing against the sky’s sour breath. Then I let my breath join the sky’s breath, and the breath of the walls, of the floor, of the ground, until we all breathe together in resounding chorus heartbeats and mouths blowing haaa and hooo with our tongues stretched out like damp fabric pulled from our lips. The bowls sing in transformative hums, reverberating between our marrow and our bones until we bump together in the stomach of a bell. 

I fold over until my arms hang loose at my sides and my head bobs like a wave-caught buoy between my knees. I am insecure because my bones pop and crack like an old, old man’s. I can’t stop laughing when I remember I have bones. I touch myself with the knowledge I’m touching my skeleton. The thing of me that will stay on the earth the longest is this thing I have never seen. I remember I have seen my teeth. I wonder if teeth really count when it comes to seeing your own skeleton. Then I am very grateful I have not been in the position to see my own skeleton and that it has stayed very much inside of my skin so far.

I imagine I’m not inside the skin I’m inside, because I don’t like this skin, especially how much of it there is. I imagine I’m not embarrassed to admit that. I imagine there are no walls, no floors, no arms, no legs, no belly folding, or lungs holding in the breath. I imagine I am inside the breath, fetal and pumping like a pulse. I push forwards and backwards and in and out. I move through you and around you and within you and without you. I’m riding on airwaves through the gaps in your teeth and the holes in your ears. I am swimming inside your veins and watching you fill with life and let it go again. I imagine I am breath. I am so assured and so constant. I have been here forever, before God, before light. Before planets and universes and dark empty space, I was here, quietly rising and falling, beating. I am ancient and I am always. I am what we all are, you are I am. Now I imagine I am the dark empty space the breath brought to be. I am illusory and guilty in my emptiness; I am unfathomable, and I know this and I hate this. I am worried I am expanding too quickly and that I may outrun every sun until I cannot see anything but my own dark emptiness.

I have a second therapist just for my dreams. This is literally true and real. This is also hilarious. Her name is Elaina, and she tells me that I can change my dreams and make anything happen because they are dreams. For some reason I keep dreaming of running my car off an overpass

and being back in high school. Elaina tells me to rehearse dreaming of a piazza in Italy. I want to tell Elaina to go fuck herself. I tell Elaina I will rehearse dreaming of a pizza.

The last time I rehearsed to just be in a room with myself I was in college when I took a meditation class where we walked silently in circles for two hours. Instead of thinking about how hungover we were, we meant to be thinking only about our heels pressing into the floor, and then our toes. Just notice the sensation of our foot meeting the ground and peeling itself away again. Just think about the ground. I would usually think about how dizzy I was getting.

Christy tells me about a time she was drunk on a bridge marching home at eighteen while her friend rode next to her on a scooter. I tell her about a time when I was drunk at eighteen and threw up in an alley and a group of boys smoking said gross, oh my god she’s puking. Christy said they did not help you? She said she was so sorry for them because they did not have any compassion and that is very sad.

Christy says the last time she left Taiwan, her mother giggled like a little girl until she cried. I don’t like thinking about mothers crying for their daughters. Even if the tears are happy, the throat still burns. The warmth of the body that made you is not next to you. The warmth of the body you made is outside of you. I would laugh until I cried too. 

My body is a gelatinous puddle on the floor. My skin melts to the mat like sun scorched rubber. Christy says come home, come home to yourself. The corners of my eyes let tears leak out snakes slithering from the soft inside sac of their eggshells. I’m a salt flat, cracked and expanding to where the horizon becomes a good faith agreement and the sky burns hot and white against me. Margot, my primary therapist, tells me how vital exercise is to processing trauma, how important it is to have healthy coping mechanisms. My body is the floor, saturating everything and spreading like steel wool sparked and cindering. I feel the weight of the bodies next to me on top of me, pressing into my chest, pushing fingers between my ribs, placing deep kisses on my eyelids. 

I am spilling into the vents and out of the windows, soaking through the ceiling below and dripping steadily into the second story. The neighbors are gathering buckets, but the leak is unplaceable, I’m coming in from everywhere. They’re shoving towels under doorways and tossing pitchers of me out the window. They are pouring me into bathtubs so I spill out of the walls. They form assembly lines to mop me up and try to sweep me down the stairs. I can’t stop, I keep leaking, out into the street and under cars. I am molasses thick and quick moving, picking up pomeranians and peddlers in my momentous current. I bubble against the pavement, gurgle through the storm drains. I flow effortlessly, grow exponentially. I am gathering everything. I am stopping traffic and sinking teslas as I bleed through the neighborhood. I am water and dirt and tar and skin and salt, and I am overflowing with confidence. I am a grief born river burning in the back of the throat of the earth. I am expanding until I am big enough to see myself. I will become an ocean. I will drown in myself if it means I will finally be close to myself.

I imagine I am being loved the way I need to be, which I have not been in a very long time and maybe even ever. I imagine I have an Austenian dalliance and toe-curling crush. I have not had a crush in three years. I learned what a crush was two years too late from a girl named Athena in the second grade. When we were nine, Athena drowned in a nearby river and they found her tiny body bloated with water miles downstream. Her funeral was the first funeral I went to where the person who died was my age. I didn’t understand everything, but I knew not to fuss with my mom about what she was making me wear. I remember Athena’s dad, must have been less than thirty, lifting his hands to his face and the edge of a tattoo escaping his sleeve. I knew her mother must have laughed hysterically until she cried. Until she became a melted mirage of herself on the floor. Until she spilled out the windows and into the streets and bubbled against the pavement. I remember wondering how long it would have taken Athena to float to the Gulf of Mexico. I remember my tears felt like the river. I remember my throat burned.

I imagine I am god. I stop imagining because I am not sure I should imagine I am god. I imagine I am god. As god I feel like an uninvited guest, imposing and offensive. I just want to talk. I am trying to love you and you won’t let me. I am showing up in timestamps and windowpanes and hyacinth blooms and coffee grounds. I am a stone in the sole of your shoe, I am nausea, I am an irrevocable nuisance. I am so obsessive it’s almost criminal. I am joining together the hands of your past with the hands of your future until all of your palms press together and you can see me. I know what you’re going to do but I want you to choose it. I need you to choose it. I need you to choose me. Sometimes I feel so far away and tiny because I feel like nobody even likes me anymore. I knew it’d happen. I knew it’d all happen. But I had to let you do what you want, because I know you’d hate me otherwise. I am so sorry. I love you. I’ll be here whenever you need me. I’m everywhere you need me. I forgive you. Do you forgive me?

Mary, 2023