GIVE US THIS DAY, SOME MEANING, A PURPOSE by Harmony Neal
Alex sunk into child’s pose, affirming she was a good person, her life meant something. Yoga was listed under “Mind/Body/Flexibility” and much more relaxing than Pilates, which made her hips and calves ache despite being a series of almost imperceptible movements. The instructor could do full splits while flat on her back and repeated calm, pleasant affirmations in a low, whispery voice. For two full hours a week Alex could stay relatively still while improving her health, body and mind.
Still trim at thirty, with enviable long, wavy locks, she looked better than the other women who were mostly in their sixties, swollen and sunken, barely managing the poses without toppling over their drooping bosoms. The couple of hard-bodied teenage girls were easy enough to ignore, or relatively easy, though she noted with guilt that she often stared at the derrière of one of the girls who inevitably ended up on a mat in front of her – two swelling globes that jiggled, in a good way.
The last ten minutes of class were her favorite. She laid on her back and imagined her lake, calm and tranquil, the surreal blue of cold medicine geltabs. Shifting from her knees to back, she pictured her lake as instructed, taking time to shut off her affirmations, trying to quiet her mind completely. Her lake sprung to mind fully formed, but as she tried to gently smooth out the ripples, it iced over with a sustained riiiiiiiip, and then there was no sound at all. Her lake was solid.
Because she was supposed to be relaxing, she decided not to resist this temporary lake, not to mind that as she panned out, all she could see was ice, no palm trees and yellow-stamened fuchsia flowers blooming on the shore – just ice and ice and ice until in the distance, silent dots, blustering, stumbling, bumping around, resolving themselves into penguins.
Penguins? Why? Intent on dipping and bobbing, they didn’t look in her direction. Their eyes were pea-sized dark pellets of disinterest and maddening obedience to nature. Some dove into a hole in the ice. A hole that expanded out and out and out the longer she stared. Her incorporeal form’s mouth gaped, eyes scrambling. In the background she sensed rustling: the instructor’s voice imploring that all would be well, people could use this time however they choose, tears are the body’s way of healing itself, everyone should stay calm calm calm over their lakes.
Alex wanted to flee, but her meaningless body stuck to the mat. She couldn’t dislodge the lake from her head, that frozen tundra with the ever expanding hole from which no penguin returned.
Harmony Neal’s short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Georgetown Review, Sou’Wester, and the online journal, Prick of the Spindle.