The Planetarium of Anxiety
Before you left for Tucson, you promised the panic attacks would subside,
lessen, grow easier, like the weight of a drowned girl coming slowly to rest
on the bottom of the ocean floor. But at Costco, looking for travel packs
of deodorant and chapstick, you started to shake so hard
I could move mountains with the force of your hands, or demolish them
at the touch of a fingertip. In the rows of brightly-colored,
perfectly-packed soaps, it seemed like every aisle was teetering,
waiting to crush you beneath their weight. You said you imagined
the light bulbs dropping one by one, descending in slow motion,
heavy like the tender flesh of ripe plums, their swollen red skin
bursting at the seams, falling open to reveal
the inner core beneath. When the manager came and asked
if we needed help, I said we were just looking out of habit.
In Phoenix at the airport, huddled in a raincoat, weighted down
by sacks of luggage like Virginia Woolf’s stone-filled pockets,
you asked me to hold your heart, something we did whenever
a new attack came, which involved me cupping the place in your chest
with my palms where that beating organ would lie,
bare, exposed, if someone were to cut it open.
As I did so, every heartbeat spilling between my fingers like honey,
I told you about the planetarium we visited in fifth grade-
the one with a ceiling covered in stars and shiny, globular moons,
and reminded you that even the planets tremble sometimes,
or feel dizzy or afraid, but eventually they all
wind up back on their axes again,
spinning smoothly through the ether of the universe.
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
andulkaphoto
