AM NO LONGER HUM A N, BUT AW I S P OF

HR said I couldn’t come back to work until I had “taken some time for myself” and “cooled down,” whatever that means. I walked through the office doors that morning with the usual–coat, purse, phone, water bottle, umbrella (it was raining)–and exited into an early evening downpour minus one umbrella, forgotten on my desk, plus one 20% off coupon to a cryotherapy and deprivation tank center “to help me take that first step.”

The flotation tank is part alien sleep chamber, part hot tub. Is this what chickens and snakes feel like in their eggs? Butterflies in their cocoons? The man who answered the phone when I scheduled my appointment warned me not to shave, that the salt water would sting, but this morning in the shower my half-asleep brain succumbed to habit and now I feel tiny stinging pinpricks up and down both of my legs. Relaxing. I can feel the wispy ends of my hair tickling my shoulders and can imagine the way it’s fanned out around my head like a halo. I am eight years old, playing mermaids in the neighborhood pool.

I am dissolving. I am no longer a human, but a wisp of consciousness. I am all of my mistakes, boxed up and stacked up on top of one another, present-wrapped with the thinnest I-am-a-good-person-I-swear paper. I’m the penny that I noticed on the sidewalk last week, but didn’t pick up. I feel full and empty and heavy and light. I feel nothing.