On the train, a man snatches my book, reads the last line, and says, I completely get you, you're not that complex. He could be right—lately all my what ifs are about breath: What if a glassblower inhales at the wrong moment? What if I'm drifting on a sailboat and the wind stops? If he'd ask me how I'm feeling, I'd give him the long version—I feel as if I'm on the moon listening to the air hiss out of my spacesuit, and I can't find the hole. I'm the vice president of panic, and the president is missing. Most nights, I calm myself by listing animals still on the Least Concern end of the extinction spectrum: aardvarks and blackbirds are fine. Minnows thrive—though this brings me no relief—they can swim through sludge if they have to. I don't think I've ever written the word doom, but nothing else fits. Every experience seems both urgent and unnatural—like right now, this train is approaching the station where my beloved is waiting to take me to the orchard, so we can pay for the memory of having once, at dusk, plucked real apples from real trees.
"On the Train, a Man Snatches My Book", Paige Lewis, Space Struck
