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The Floor
My mother purchased a new yoga mat today. 

It’s blue. It matches the rest of her workout wardrobe—the foam roller, the exercise bands, the five-pound dumbbells and even the painted vase perched atop gray shelves from IKEA—to, apparently, a calming effect. It’s interesting how the smallish details we inhabit hold our emotions in place; amongst the peeling wallpaper and water-stained windows, the new yoga mat feels…out. But to her it is in, if not what holds things in, to which I rest my case. 

I find a particular pleasure in laying down upon her yoga mat; the new one supplies quite the elevated experience as compared to the old one, if not by half an inch. It is ostensibly intended for perpendicular motion, but I prefer it for what I like to call the meditative mind. On my back, I soak it in, and vice versa. Slowly, I melt into the floor—seeping downwards, seeping outwards, I am oozing from my fingertips. The yoga mat is enveloping; it sends me away and grounds me here, a solid but assuring embrace.

It is the embrace of my weight: a subjective absolute of sorts, at times full of disgrace, and quite frequently effaced. Oh, but the weight of the world is not for me to carry, at least not now, for this is all I can feel. It is better to impose myself onto myself. My weight, my disgraced, my effaced. 

Indeed, it is liberating to have no sensation except the feeling of yourself. On the floor, my mind is perfectly empty. 

I am looking up. 

The ceiling is a canvas of fascination, a blank white wall that whispers of upwards descent. The ceiling is to the floor a parallel plane, an objective infinity of sorts. I muse that it is plain for most people, except for, perhaps, a single light fixture. But I—not even that. I figure that this is what modern art is—it makes you feel something, if not everything, if not nothing. 

Nothing but your own weight. 

I close my eyes—it’s too much to handle—and think about what I have to offer. 

I have found my place.
Sophia Chen
Published in Issue 42