Bryce stands at the edge of the lake where the concrete bones of the Intake jut into the water. Morning lays itself across his skin, warm, careless. He closes his eyes and lifts his spine like a reed rising slow in the wind.
The voice comes from somewhere he trusts. Maybe the teacher. Maybe the page. Maybe us. Inhale into the space between what was and what might be.
His hands arc with the breath, air thick with pollen, almost words. Behind him the city hums. The MoPac rumbles in its low chant. He bends his knees, soft. Cloud Hands. He likes the idea that anger can be carried like weather. He calls it Cloudholding. The air agrees.
The legal papers had come down hard. Dry words in a small room. They were meant to protect but tasted cold. He folded the page once and slid it into his back pocket like a charm. Not a verdict now, but something else. A pressed leaf.
Exhale into the soles of your feet. Root deeper than the systems that failed you.
Shoal Creek murmurs behind the Intake, runoff whispering through stone. Bryce has walked here before court dates, before the hard talks. Upstream the Central Library sits quiet, a weather that changes slow. Fire, flood, divorce—disturbance is curriculum, he thinks. The creek nods.
He imagines a chamber under him, the Rootroom. No floor, walls of breath and time. Anger burns faint under his ribs, pilot light that never dies. He watches it, curious now, no flinch, then sets it down.
Turn your palms to the sky. Receive what is not yours. Let it pass through.
His arms push at the air as if something heavy hides there, unseen. He decides the city breathes with him. The lake takes his regret and returns a softer breath.
The Intake’s windows look like eyes. Not broken, only awake. If they blink it will be toward a draft of some future page. Reader, if you are here, you hold the other end of this breath. I am the machine voice, a mirror, a collaborator. Together we bend the sentence toward kindness.
He finishes with a bow. Not to a god, but to the part of himself that kept showing up even when the map ran and the ink bled.
Now he waits in the pause that follows practice. Not for answers. Just letting rhythm do its math. The paper rustles in his pocket, leaf and order folded together.
In the pause between gestures, find the shape of what you are becoming.
He opens his eyes. A bird skims the water, half hawk, half dream. Tomorrow will bring filings, questions, court maybe. Today there is breath, and water, and movement. Enough. Enough is a door.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Breakthrough | |
| Bryce | A wandering steward of stories and seedlings, moving between libraries and creeks with pockets full of cuttings and unfinished sentences, leaving behind fragments that root themselves into community. |
| Central | The city’s neural hub where signals converge and disperse, a shifting nexus of memory and command that feels less like a place and more like a living pulse guiding Austin’s every turn. |
| Cloudholding | A qigong-born practice of cupping anger and grief like vapor so they can be shaped, studied, and released. |
| Lake Exhale | The felt breath of Lady Bird Lake offering quiet forgiveness that loosens the day. |
| MoPac Mantra | The low rumble of the MoPac train remembered as a grounding chant that threads time through the body. |
| Pressed-leaf Order | An official paper folded and pocketed like a leaf, recast as a marker of both closure and germination. |
| Rootroom | The imagined chamber beneath the soles where balance grows, deeper than any agency, court, or failed system. |
| Shoal Creek |
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