I am present. I am growing. I am holding space for healing, hollowing myself into a soft cave where tender creatures will shelter and rest. I am immobile, spreading my roots. I am unlearning “value,” “productivity,” “positivity.” I am calling in the inherent truthfulness of my body, in all its terrible, beautiful vulnerability. From my little corner of things, I watch the seasons turn, and fill my bones with that gift of renewal given to all things. I am accomplishing this mainly by shuffling around.

I was recruited out of college to be a corporate spy and it turns out it’s easy.

You busy around just enough to earn your keep, and every now and then draft in a workhorse’s wake to seem exceptional by proxy.

Anyone who cares enough to parse out your actual contribution breakdown is a low tier tryhard; use them as a social scapegoat.

 In formal settings, you parrot company propaganda, and slag it off hours, so everyone knows it’s a performance, that your conversance in the awful local argot bespeaks a playful wit, that you’re in this world but not of it.

Do: smile, drink (just enough), accept invitations (but never extend), tease playfully (but with a delightful nastiness only those operating on your higher plane will register), dress simple but flattering, passively cultivate mystique, playfully deflect flirtation, smoke cigarettes, accept drugs (but never offer), collect gossip, talk normal, flick your eyes everywhere always.

Don’t: grin, sleep with anyone, disperse gossip, sweat, social climb, hug, brag, have a “work family,” have a “work wife,” show up early, stay late, hold too much eye contact, play a character, play multiple characters, run, wear a backpack, whine, take sides, wear interesting shoes.

The rest is just emails.

The girl was lost in the mall, outside the candle store. While all the other stores smeared together for her, she had remembered passing through the cloud around it that smelled like her aunt’s condo, and the bird looking woman with the cupcakes that weren’t actually cupcakes out front.  At least while she was swaddled in the vanilla-ish cloud she knew where she was, sort of.

She decided to walk. Her mom kept not appearing, and the bird woman’s scrunch face she kept flashing over was making the girl antsy. She didn’t want to be concerned-for; to see an adult nervous made her nervous. Obviously she knew, when you’re lost, stay put, kiddo, but she could do a lap and go back to staying put, she figured.

By the store that seemed to only sell one kind of big chair was a propped metal door, and past the propped metal door was a tunnel, and the girl loved tunnels. Tunnels were cool. They were buildings’ secret skeletons. Out of the bird woman’s frown zone she was back to confident she’d find her mom, or vice versa, eventually. It was how this worked. So she could go check out the tunnel for a bit before that happened, while she had the chance.

Well, the tunnel was disappointing. While it had a nice illicit dinginess, it wasn’t all that different in vibe or particulars than the basement rooms at Sunday School, where she liked to duck out to under cover of bathroom break. Dim fluorescent, wet looking paint, sticky floor. But it was long and empty and something to do. And look at this: when she turned a corner, a whole big room, and in the room, a play structure.

Each time she reaches for this memory later in life, the elements of the play structure seem to reshuffle and recombine. Tube bridge, net bridge, tube slide, bubble window, ball pit, tic tac toe spinners, all in dull old-candy purples and greens, in every permutation. If she drew it twice she would draw it different. But that’s later. Now, the girl put her shoes in the shoe cubby, the only pair there. Why wouldn’t she explore it?

It’s big. The tunnels twist ahead and behind her as she crawls. The ambient static tugs at her like puppies. The tunnels keep twisting and now she’s disoriented. It feels like a circle. It feels like coiled intestines. She hasn’t panicked this whole time but she’s starting to now. The faster she crawls the wronger things feel. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Until finally, blessedly, there’s the slide, into the ball pit. She scrambles out, as fast as anyone can claw out of a ball pit, snatching her shoes from their cubby, and runs. It’s not until she’s in the car home, tuning out a steady drone of lecture from the driver’s seat, that she notices they’re not quite her shoes. It’s something about the laces. She untangles, retangles them. They’re not hers, she can tell. She’s sure, really.

The feeling of wrong doesn’t goes away, it just burrows deeper. It’s in everything. The colors of this world are wrong, flatter, especially near sunset. Some sodas are too sweet. Some aren’t sweet enough. Her father insists foods that aren’t her favorite are; her mother’s smell has a sour note. Her teacher is stricter. She doesn’t say anything about it, to anyone. She watches and observes, collects data, for when she can get back to where she came from. She never does.