Page 36 of Rise
Leigh didn’t smile widely, just something small. A flicker more than a flash, a soft acknowledgment that passed through her eyes before settling back into stillness.
“Glad you’re here,” she said, voice low and grounded. “Take any spot that feels good.”
Hazel settled near the back of the room, rolling her mat out in the corner. She sank down onto it slowly, bones stiff, legs reluctant to fold the way they used to. Her shirt clung to the small of her back. As she glanced around, disappointment sank within her chest when she realized Iris was not among those in the room; her classes must have been in the morning, before Verdance opened for the day. She should have asked before she’d called.
Leigh began the class without fanfare a few moments later.
“Start on your back,” she said, voice soft. “Let the mat hold you.”
Hazel eased down, spine touching rubber one vertebra at a time. Her knees knocked together and her hands felt strange at her sides, like she didn’t know what to do with them.
“Close your eyes if you want. Notice where the tension lives today. Don’t fight it. Just notice.”
Tension lived in her jaw, tight from sleepless grinding. In her shoulders, from shaping dough at dawn. In her hands, still aching fromcarrying too much. It lived in her hips, her ankles, the back of her neck. It lived in the place behind her ribs where she kept everything she didn’t say. Where all the grief pressed in and settled, waiting to be let free.
Leigh guided them through slow breathwork. Inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for six. Hazel tried, but her breath stuttered, catching halfway up her throat.
From there, they moved into slow, deliberate shapes— cat-cow, low lunge, thread the needle. Nothing fancy, nothing that required perfection. Just shapes that forced Hazel tofeelher body again. Her hip creaked in pigeon pose. Her wrists ached in downward dog. Her balance faltered in warrior II.
When she folded forward, forehead grazing her mat, Beck’s voice came back to her, uninvited.
You know you can’t pour from an empty cup, right?
She pressed her palms deeper into the mat and gritted her teeth.
She hated how much that line had stayed with her throughout the day— and more than that, she hated that he was right. Hated that he’d held up a mirror she hadn’t asked for, hadn’t wanted, and forced her to see what she’d been so carefully avoiding.
She liked to believe she’d made a change by coming home. That leaving Boston had meant leaving behind the worst parts of herself— the burnout, the inability to find connection, the constant edge of panic disguised as ambition. But if she was honest, she hadn’t softened her life so much asrepackagedit. She had simply traded one kind of unrelenting pressure for another.
Here, in Bar Harbor, she’d just found new ways to run herself ragged. Earlier mornings, longer hours, higher expectations. She’d filled her days with flour and deliveries and menu testing and smiling at customers until her cheeks ached. Not because she loved every moment, but because she wasterrifiedof slowing down long enough to hear the quiet. To notice how lonely she still felt in a house too big for one person. To feel the hollow ache of grief settle in when the noise stopped.
She had built the bakery like a dam, one she could hide behind and pour herself into. But lately the cracks were showing. She didn’t pause, she didn’t rest. She barely evenbreathed, except to notice how tired she was. Her body ached constantly, like it was begging her to stop, but she hadn’t listened. She didn’t know how to.
Because slowing down might mean feeling it all.
And she wasn’t sure she could survive that.
Leigh moved around the room with slow, silent movements, adjusting when necessary, sometimes simply watching. When she passed Hazel’s mat, her hand brushed Hazel’s upper back— gentle pressure, nothing more.
“There’s no rush,” she murmured. “The body knows when it’s ready.”
Hazel didn’t respond, but the words settled somewhere low in her chest. A response to the words she hadn’t voiced, but still lingered on her tongue.
They moved into bridge pose. Hazel’s thighs trembled, breath shaky, her glutes not engaging the way they should. She thought about the call from her father, a few days earlier. The way his voice had carried with her through every moment since, like a storm cloud not content to clear.
They shifted to seated twists and her spine creaked. She remembered the smell of mint tea rising between her and Sylvia just yesterday, and the way Sylvia had said,“She wanted to leave you something that would hold.”
Hazel didn’t know if she was holding it, or if it was holdingher.
If this life was a choice, or a cage. Something she’d turn towards, when things got hard, or something she’d run away from. Again.
Her muscles screamed through the final standing sequence, her balance hopeless. Her heel wobbled, her shoulders curled in. At some point, a tear slipped from one eye. It didn’t fall, not exactly. Just hovered there, clinging to her lashes until it gave in and faded away. She told herself it was just from the exertion; from finding a level of control over her body she hadn’t managed in a while.
And then, finally, they lay down.
Savasana.
Hazel stretched out flat, her arms resting beside her, palms open, legs turned slightly outward. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears, steady and tired. The mat wasn’t soft, but it felt like the only solid thing beneath her in weeks.
