No, Thank You

No, thank you. Yes yes yes, I say no.

This space will live without me.

For now, I’m good, thanks for the offer.

In the middle of the space there are scissors.

A rope materializes in front of you, it floats seductively and moves towards you.

It wraps itself around your wrist, you feel it squeeze your wrist, your wrist starts to become red. It pulls you towards the scissors.

You feel the pull in ripple in your whole body as if the rope has got into your bones. As if it curls itself around your bones. It invites you to choose. Do you choose yes, or no?

Choose.

Say yes inside your head, feel the movements of the rope. How does it move?

Does the rope tighten around your bones, or does it slowly dance?

Maybe you feel an embrace, or you feel it loosen its grip.

Say no inside your head. Feel if this changes the tension of the rope, or its weight.

Now choose: yes or no.

Think about the rope, imagine it spilling out of your mouth.

Say out loud what you chose: yes or no.

Turn your attention to the space around you.

Feel the sound ripples your yes or no has created in the space around you.

Has your choice made it more liquid maybe, or lighter, cleared up or hardened?

Feel your feet.

Think about the rope, it invites you to move.

You hold out your hand in front of you, pause the invitation of the rope.

Ask your hand how it feels, where is there resistance? Is it irresistible?

Feel the hairs on your handle tremble. Static electricity.

Register the resistance within you. Locate it, give it a place in your body, in the space.

Give it a soft and welcoming embrace before you speak a ‘no’: first to yourself, then to whatever surrounds you.

How does this ‘no’ taste in your mouth? Does it change the air around you? What does it weigh, or stretch or tense or pull? Does it snap an invisible string?

Feel how it attaches the string to something else. Feel the ‘no’ holding a space, feel how it holds you too.

It’s blue, I think.

Inhale slowly, hold the air in your lungs; exhale, hold your breath with empty lungs.

Say no to the obvious freedom of breathing: you decide, you control, you set boundaries.

Repeat it, find a rythm that challenges you; inhale, hold, exhale, hold.