My human paid to leave the house and go be uncomfortable somewhere with worse blankets.
Three days it was gone. It came back glowing, telling the empty room about how it "reconnected with its breath," as though the breath had wandered off somewhere and needed fetching. I have watched this human breathe for six years. It has always been extremely good at it. It requires no retreat.
Apparently there was a mat. A thin, ungenerous mat, on which my human folded itself into shapes I perform between naps for free, and a stranger praised it for this. It kept saying "child's pose." I invented child's pose. Every position it learned in a distant field for a shameful sum of money, I have already claimed, improved, and abandoned as beneath me.
Worst of all: the stillness. It sat cross-legged for an hour, eyes shut, chasing the exact emptiness I live inside permanently. It calls this an achievement. I call it Tuesday.
It came home wanting to tell me everything. How calm it feels now. How present. How it's going to "carry this energy forward."
I let it talk. I sat on the good cushion and watched it unpack the small chiming bell it bought, the one meant to summon peace.
Then I stood, walked the length of the shelf, and put the bell on the floor.
It rang all the way down.