I saw a video of a woman, holding a glass of wine steadily in her hand, as she backed up and tucked all of her limbs, including the hand with the wine, into a dryer and promptly shut the door.

This is what I want to do. To get over that claustrophobic feeling and to be held, cradled, nestled into the steady heat. On a low permanent press. Because I already have the spinning and spinning around feeling. What’s up is down, and what’s down is up. The tilt-o-whirl of being alive. The feeling like I’m about to pass out, that fuzzy grey crinkling into the corners of my eyes, like dust from the fallow fields in Oklahoma or from a stampede of horses on the plains. The heaviness. Each fiber of muscle and sinew going soft, gravity doing all the work to pull me down towards the earth’s core as it also spins and spins, mirroring me, or maybe I’m mirroring it. Letting go. Giving it away. The pain, sorrow, grief, lightness. It’s dark, the only noise a silent humming, maybe it sounds like a song to some people, or a meditative gong, or the same sound the ocean makes, the water and wind churning in a low rumble, loud and then subtle. Or it’s the womb, ending in the beginning. Going around and round. Doing somersaults in the tumult. Remembering in flashes that freedom, of movement, coming to, being able to start afresh. But all the inertia remains, the insults added up, the slights and slashes, so maybe I’ll stay here, instead, and wait it out.