Namaste

Deep breath in, a woman’s voice says right in my ear, exhale slowly out through the mouth. I mimic motions I should know how to do, actions I have theoretically done since I first was born, and somehow they now seem impossible. My lungs have sought employment elsewhere, my rib cage turned to stone and refuses to give even a little. This room is covered in sticky inertia, dragging me down and back, it suspends me mid air. Everyone can see it, it’s that car accident you swerve to avoid, it’s that commotion in the street where you hope someone else will take it upon themselves to call authorities. It’s a cast iron decoration atop my eyebrows, which sink into the hollows of my eyes, and I can’t stand in the shower anymore.

Flip through old notebooks for clues and find only the same song on repeat, isn’t it getting old. How desperately you want to protect those around you from the avalanche, how you overcompensate, how you hide. Would that I could write a new story, that we could erase the incessant returns to this particular narrative, I dreamed I was drowning and woke as if paralyzed, I wish it was enough to know this too shall pass, because it will pass and my body won’t remember a time when my lungs wouldn’t widen, my eyes wouldn’t open, I survive only by forgetting, I suppose the same could be said for a lot of things. It’s just this isn’t a metaphor.