Dear Adriene

The italicized text indicates found language from Yoga with Adriene (YWA) YouTube videos. The letters (30 in total) echo the 30 day yoga cycles YWA presents online.

DAY 1

Dear Adriene, When you said ground down I thought you said brown down, like beef, because just before that you mentioned the nutrients of your practice—each day I do, practice, drop another effervescent tablet in the jam jar on the sink. I watch a mother watch her daughter read about her hair and consider all the other moms I’m missing. Outside, babies grow and I facilitate it from the concrete patio. I can’t decide which body part to use as the thread that stitches me through time and space, what have you got for that? Just begin to arrive. Why do I feel proud standing beneath a tall chestnut tree when I have stood under so many before without feeling any pride at all? Dirt around my fingernails like a silk dress. Tissue on a black shirt through the wash. One day we will all be it—I could be holding handfuls of you, now.

DAY 2

Dear Adriene, When I was home I thought about what you’d said—fold in towards it. Some unabashed pride, some handsome lawn. Like how weeds are simply plants in the wrong place. Summer’s drying out, just flit and rot like bachelor’s buttons, featherfew for migraines. What does your heart say? What do you want to return to? I fell right down in the yard, foot in a hole, and spotted someone through the fence. Have you seen a bird that’s half red and half white underneath? Because I have. The breath always comes first—except when it doesn’t.

DAY 5

Dear Adriene, How does it feel? I love when I can pick you fast with both hands.

DAY 11

Dear Adriene, How about the feeling when you’ve confidently identified a flower and years later find out you're wrong? Super important not to collapse here. And if you discovered a brand new sound, how would you know for sure? There are at least six boards that can be cut from a single tree for boat building—you push the whole thing through the chewer like play doh shooting out in squiggles. To burn the wood’s the only way to smush it back together. Just notice the bones, you said, but mine have never broken. For all I know they’re gnawed off at the ends. Is a beaver dam a tool? There’s some contention here. I myself have never trusted footing on wet wood, the slow slide into cool water. Imagine coming across your own bones on a footpath through the woods, screaming white against the moss.

DAY 13

Dear Adriene, Travel up and down the spine—long belly. I keep telling myself I’ll do more when this is over, but what if it never ends? Is your mouth different or have you just grown in around your teeth? Your voice changes but I don’t know how many years it’s been. One thing I know for sure—over time your background empties out. Men move dirt (as they always have) and I watch as a place where I’ve stood is buried under two tons of rock. There’s always two stories, two gull wings attached to no body. When I drove 80 down the back roads of my hometown, a turkey vulture in the other lane never flinched. Take a couple quiet breaths.