Susie suggests to improve
my stress, I “put space between
the stimulus and my response.”
Breathing will help, she says,
and so tonight, never mind
what the stimulus was,
I imagined taking in a breath
the size of North America,
let the whole topography
unfurl in me, and when
I still felt the urge to fight,
I upgraded the next breath
to a space more the size
of the milky way and while
I was out there, on impulse, I put
that little almond-shaped amygdala
of mine on a passing comet
and watched it fly away,
its fists still up in the air
swinging at nothing.
I don’t know how it made it
all the way back to Placerville
so fast, but it was there in time
to hear my lips say what Susie
told me to say, Let’s start over.
And damned if it didn’t just put on
its fussiest pucker face, but
instead of mocking me,
it got all starry eyed, as if it were
thinking about how nice
it had been on that comet ride,
tiny lanterns of stars all around.
