the unanswered sit

Choose one question you cannot answer. Not a worry dressed as a question — a real one, with wonder in it. Why does the rain smell like that. What the cat is actually thinking. Anything with a lean in it.

Hold the question lightly, the way you would hold a firefly — cupped, not crushed.

Breathe in through the nose for a count of four. Rest a moment at the top. Out for a slow count of six, and let the question just sit there, unanswered, unGoogled, entirely comfortable.

Settle, then again. Three rounds.

The practice is the not-reaching. Every other hour of the day, a question in the hand becomes a phone in the hand within four seconds. For these ninety seconds, own a question the way you would own a stone from a river — for its weight, not its use. You can stop here.