i do it mainly for the way it ends, when we are all lying on the floor again exhausted in a corpse pose (this is what it’s actually called, corpse pose), and my corpse is facing upwards into the dim overhead lights and i sense other bodies beside me and it’s such a cliche that they are nearly always other women, sometimes younger, some older, and i spend some of this time wondering if they feel as i do, alive, though corpsing on the mat.

the heat of the room overpowering and all those little essential oils we women just love so much, eucalyptus, patchouli, whatever drifting in little scent tendrils above us and underneath that a deeper funk of bodies that have been working, the body singing itself out of every available opening, an animal smell as though the room were full of foxes, of deer, of horses, of sweat and muscle and flesh and darkness, of stars and desire, of hunger and of exhaustion. i am a part of all this communion and it’s fine, it’s better than fine, my own body singing itself into the collective stink —

i couldn’t be happier so that’s when the tears come, of course.