Breathe and float

I cannot catch my breath and so I sail forward into the day,

my exhalation fueling momentum, 

my inhalation creating the calm before the storm.

I cannot finish my list, so I up-end the table with a simple lift and push. Over it goes, a listing ship of to-dos and not-dones; a n’er-do-well am I. 
I feel better when the wooden legs are broken, the chairs upset, the cutlery and pencils scattered across the tile, papers fluttering as my breath grows ragged and then (spokes of the hurricane) quiet.

I cannot quiet the looping in my head and so I run the opposite direction from where I sit on the field of floor, my dreams distracting me from the anger and fear sprinting throughout. 

Yet I return, out of breath, to my thoughts in this memoried track meet, a meeting of mind and heart and all the places my feet have been. We choose our loops or they choose us.

And the clouds gather.

I cannot gather my thoughts enough to choose between tasks and so I curl up in bed and read and read and read. I pull my laptop close to me and words spill out in barbed clickity-clacks and dripping pauses, a river of sentences full of jumping commas and gnashing dashes waiting to be caught, gutted, filleted, and devoured.

I am the hand on the pole and the hook and the jaws clamping down. 

It starts to rain.

I turn to look at myself and the words play dead in upturned palms.

My to-do list flops around, breathless, on the floor.

I am moved to stay still in this flood of not-enough, obligation circling at my ankles, pant cuffs wet with guilt and perceived failure. The current pulls me, it is too strong to resist and I am soaked in old tales. They rush into my lungs as I go under, commas and dashes thrashing about my head, sharp-toothed numbers sizing up my longevity and worth, jumbled letters clinging to my thighs. 

It is the words that untangle and push me up to the surface. Buoy me with susurrations of truth. I take a breath and feel the sky clearing and see the shore and taste the wind. I am floating. I can feel the turbulence underneath the surface but these words keep me afloat, above the flood, below the storm, in the soft dampness of the in-between.

I cannot catch my breath and so I sail forward into the day,

my exhalation fueling momentum, 

my inhalation creating the calm before the storm (that washes the sky clean).