Those things that make you breathe again are happening, even as your pulse quickens and your chest tightens. Even as gelatinous anxiety looms and threatens. The smallest, most important things are taking place right now.
Somewhere, a scruffy-headed kid squinches her face to the sun as she stretches for a blackberry.
Somewhere, a high creek rushes past, sweeping nettles downstream.
Somewhere, a single-engine airplane rumbles through a warm and cloudless sky, coating the land with suspended time.
Waves paint white foam on massive rocks. Onions sizzle and carmelize over a fire. A cellist draws his bow, steady and sweet, across a C string.
These things exist. You can breathe again.
