Light turned the color of amber when she had already been sitting on the mat for a long time.
It wasn’t the kind of posture correction or breath-counting taught in meditation classes. Just the angle her body found on its own — knees turned out, spine aligned upright, and then the whole self slowly withdrawing inward.
A candle was burning beside her. The scent of bergamot drifted up from the deodorant, blending into the air, layering with the scent of the candle itself into a fragrance whose origin she couldn’t quite name.
She was suddenly back there.
That year she spent three months in Italy, the apartment she rented had a lemon tree downstairs, and someone on the neighboring balcony was always drying bergamot peels for tea. She couldn't remember the person's face, only that the scent would drift over in a specific wind direction, as punctual as a promise. She didn't go looking for that memory. It came on its own. As her breathing slowed, the boundaries of her body began to blur. Where her arms ended and where the air began became less important. She no longer tried to distinguish whether this moment was meditation, or just sitting, or something caught in the suspension between the two. The day had been long. But the time spent sitting here did not belong to that length. It was carved out — an independent hour, uncounted in today's ledger.
Sweat began to surface near the end of the practice, subtle, on the skin’s surface. Normally, this would make her want to get up and wipe it away, or think about changing clothes next, facing that damp discomfort sticking to her body.
But not this time.
The underarm area, where soil had been applied, felt so clean she could barely tell she was sweating. It wasn’t the absence of sweat; it was the state of sweat existing but not constituting a burden — like knowing something happened, yet needing to do nothing about it.
She sat, until the candle’s flame stabilized, until the scent of bergamot slowly receded into the background.
Not a calmer version of her.
Just her, in an evening that required nothing to be processed.
Let the day fall away. What’s left is enough.
She doesn’t explain herself much… She moves at a pace the world has forgotten.
Some things you don’t need to manage. You just need them to not get in the way.
