I meditate on the roof because meditation is the art of not caring whether you're going to fall. It's not an art I've entirely mastered, but I don't think I'll ever be able to submerge myself in the world around me that completely.

Perhaps "not caring" is not quite right. I do care, passionately, when I mediate. I lie back against the rough, grey shingles; they scrape my bare back, rubbing the straps of my tank top against my sunburnt skin. I feel the hard bumps and cracks of the roof where it presses my messy hair to my scalp. The dark, humid air wraps around my long, bare legs and clings to the bead of sweat dripping down my brow. I shuffle a little, repositioning myself for a more comfortable view of the velveteen sky above me. The soft blackness drips stars, little brilliant, cold specks of red and blue languishing in forgotten folds of Einstein's shawl.

Though the view is spectacular, I have come to meditate. I cannot simply observe the smooth, black curve of the chimney where it obscures the jeweled sky and seeps into the blackness; I must become it. And so I close my eyes.

I am breathing. My breast rises and falls, travelling smoothly through the heavy air like an abandoned swing rocking to and fro. I suck in the thick atmosphere through my nose, and expel a puff of thinner, hotter air from my mouth.

A droplet of moisture, the sweat from earlier, travels slowly along my temple. My mind watches it as it meanders across my cheek and collapses to the shingles below. My bare feet sink into the roof, like they are on a beach or a dune in the desert. The grains of shingle-sand rub against my shoulderblades and my bare arms.

A trickle of life slips into my mind on cat's paws. It slinks through the twilit fog within, careful to disturb nothing. It turns its glowing eyes to me, and I catch a glimpse of the world within their prisms. But before I can remember, the life leaps down from its perch and is gone.

And yet, there it is again. A glimpse of the sorrows and joys of everyone who is, who was, and who will be. A tantalizing scrap of the grand unified theory: a woman laughs as she clutches her newborn boy, Louis; a man cries out in his sleep, waking from another nightmare about the death of Max in the trenches; a hummingbird whizzes around a red plastic feeder in the shade of an evergreen, sheltering it from the merciless, loving sun above. Neither can live while the other survives.

I open my eyes, and I am the sky. I feel the twists and turns of the navy blue heavens as I feel my palm resting against my thigh.

A glimmer of something magical flickers on the horizon of thought. I rise. From my seat, I see the first rays of dawn peek over the gray-green field, casting a pink glow across the pale blue-grey silk surrounding them.

Just beneath the dark ground three storeys down, a million insects crawl over each other, preparing for the day to come. A little higher, a young boy turns over in his restless slumber, yet he will not awaken. The house creaks and groans as it settles in for another half-century. In the field beyond, a cat stalks toward its home with its prey clutched between its jaws - or perhaps it has already stalked, or perhaps it has yet to stalk. Time is not as concrete as we would like to believe.

A creak groans behind me, and the last few grains of sand slip from between my fingers. I dust off my palms and crane my neck to see who's pushed open the skylight behind me.

"Time to come back inside, Clio," says my mother quietly.

"Okay," I reply.