You brought me somewhere quiet, and I want you to know I noticed.
For three days now, no bright rectangle at dawn, no jolt of cold coffee poured into me before I had finished asking for water. You laid me down on a thin mat and told me to breathe, and I could not believe my luck. I have been trying to get you to breathe like that for years.
Down into the belly, slow, all the way to the bottom where you keep the things you don't look at. I felt one of them loosen in your left hip during the long fold, the tight little knot you have been sitting on since spring. It let go. You made a sound.
You blamed the stretch. It was not the stretch.
The woman at the front kept saying be present, and I wanted to tell her: I am the only part of you that has ever been anywhere else. I do not know what a retreat is. I know your shoulders came down from around your ears somewhere on the second morning and stayed.
I know your jaw, which has been braced like a fist since a room I cannot name, finally unclenched over a bowl of something warm. I felt your feet meet actual grass. They had forgotten. They were so glad.
You keep thanking the mountains and the tea and the silence. That's fine. I'm not proud.
But when the retreat ends and the rectangle comes back and the coffee comes back and the knot in the hip starts filling up again, remember there is a cheaper version of all this. It is just breathing. Down to the bottom. You can do it in a parking lot.
I'll be here either way.
Drink some water before you sleep.