A woman turns off her brain to give it a rest. All day, she lets her body follow its own will. She eats when she's hungry, stops when she's full; walks when her legs are restless, stops when they are tired; sleeps when her eyelids droop. Her sleep is long and deep, as it never was when her brain raced, filling her head and knocking on her skull.

She throws out her clocks and lives by the light of the seasons, sleeping long in winter, short in summer. When it gets dark, she dozes in front of the TV. Sometimes, her body, rested from the evening, wakes in the middle of the night, so she rises and plays the piano or reads a book until dawn.

When dust comes, she lets it lie. When her dishes are used, she only washes them if she feels like it. She digs in the garden, pulls up weeds. Clearing flowerbeds satisfies her body rhythm, her sense of freedom.

In winter, when she can't work outside, she sorts through cupboards. She gets rid of books and glass and silver, throws out old files she won't open again and clothes she'll never mend.

With each instinct, each impulse, she feels lighter. One day, she climbs onto the roof of her house and imagines that she can rise and float away. She takes a deep breath, spreads her arms to the wind, and waits, but her body grows restless and begins to nag at her to turn her brain back on. She resists. Her life, half open, half closed, lures her like a siren song, but the pinpricks in her mind continue.

With a sigh, she comes down, rings her doorbell, opens her own door.  

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Aline Soules' work has appeared in journals, e-zines, and anthologies such as The MacGuffin, 100 Words, Literature of the Expanding Frontier, and The Size of the World/The Shape of the Heart. In addition to "Float Away," prose poems from her manuscript Woman Acts have appeared in Tattoo Highway, edifice WRECKED, Poetry Midwest, and the Kenyon Review.
E-mail: soulesa at yahoo dot com  

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