Morning Meditation. Sit down and center. I'm impatient for results.
It's been a month and I haven't transcended. I think I might be doing it wrong.
But my teacher says there is no wrong. He gave me a word, which he said to repeat,
Over and over
Until you forget to remember
Or remember to forget
Inhale wombats, exhale kittens.
Try, for once in your life, to sit in silence.
Hmmm
Gosh
I'm out of eggs
And blueberries
And butter, although I shouldn't be eating butter. My cholesterol is 286. Put plaque in your pipe and smoke it. I should switch to I Can't Believe Its Not Butter. But if I can't believe its not butter, what am I supposed to believe it is?
Come back. Be still. Shut up. I'm talking to me and me and me, all speaking at once, but none to each other. Please allow me to introduce my selves. There's the me who got sick and died ten years ago. The me who'll I'll be when I get better. And the me of now, the high school science lab formaldehyde piglet, on the shelf and floating. I am trying to pull my selves together.
Inhale fishhooks, exhale rubber baby bumpers.
This is not the first time I've learned to meditate. It's the fourth. But I've never done it with other people. It think it's better with other people. I like other people. That first day, in class, we sat still, together, until the teacher said to
Come up gently.
Come up slow.
I tilted my head towards the floor and opened my eyes a sliver. I took a deep breath. The room smelled like my own roses, the ones I cut fresh that morning and brought as an offering. There was rustling, sighs. The sun gleamed off the strawberry leg hairs of the boy sitting next to me on the couch. The leg was attached to a fine torso and a sweet face, a face so familiar, I thought I knew him from before.
Day one, he asked me how I was feeling. Since I thought I knew him, I told him the truth. He offered to drive me to class all week, because I was too tired to drive myself. Because I'm learning how to ask for help. And I'm learning to accept.
Our fourth day, our last ride. The Strawberry Boy said, "Are you ready to go?"
Inhale pythons, exhale silk worms.
We parked in my driveway and talked. Not Smalltalk. Talk too big for a car seat. "Would you like to sit in my garden?" the now-me said, which was startling because the now-me never talks to boys. "Step out of the car. Come into the light. I have tea and ears and chairs."
He's the spawn of madness, drink, and rages.
Singe begets char begets soot.
He's been masticated, expectorated, shattered and glued, left-jabbed and leaking, but he's cute. And all in one piece. Clearly not emotionally, but physically, and that has to count for something. And he's familiar. So familiar.
Someday he hopes to wake up singing. Someday he hopes to walk like steel. Someday he hopes to transcend hoping,
Get up
Get over
Grow up
Get real.
His words dribbled off my limbs like sprinkler water. They spliced my ribs and massaged my heart. And of course he was familiar. He was every man I'd ever loved.
The dead me stirred. The dead me, that power tool. She'd charge herself and try to fix him with anchors, screws, whatever it takes. And she knows that it takes and takes and takes. C'mon. You ever wake up in the middle of the night to find your lover with his fangs plunged deep into your jugular vein, and you think, "No wonder I'm always so tired in the morning."
If this boy was only older and I was thinner, if he was solvent and I was pliant, if he was remotely interested and I was un-dead, I'd lay myself down, sweep the hair from my neck, and wait for the bite. But alas, I am a formaldehyde piglet and this piglet thinks, Where would he sleep? There's a cat at my head, a cat at my foot, and the sickness, that big-boned, eavesdropping bastard. It spoons like a fork. It shoves Get Well Never cards under my pillow.
Dearest Girl
I am in you of you through you
Merged in cells and blood and brain
I can stop your clock, unspool you
You're my life, my home, my gain
Best wishes for a speedy recovery
Your one, your only, Strawberry Boy
Inhale scalpels, exhale butterknives.
Butter. Butter.
I want real butter
Life is better with butter
I am butter.
I. Am.
Butter. Butter.
Repeat the word
Until you forget to remember
Or remember to forget
Come up gently
Come up slow
Inhale brambles, exhale peace.
Lather
Rinse
Release
Jill Glass is a former Sr. VP/Marketing at A&M Records. Her fiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine West, ZYZZYVA, and Ninth Letter. She is completing work on her collection, The Agoraphobic's Holiday and Other Stories. She lives in Los Angeles, and studies writing with Jack Grapes. She recommends that if you live and write in Los Angeles, you should, too.