In the Chest

Keep off the caffeine, advises the doctor. At least significant amounts of it.

As with my pregnancy, I teeter on the edge of advisable anyhow. It's how the last few years have worked. If I can speed up, there seems no sense in slowing down.

At the edge of advisable, I begin to feel it in my chest. Caffeine and adderall and stress and LIFE. It's all there, like when I began hyperventilating the day after our second daughter was born and my husband was explaining how we'd need to drive out to Trenton to pick up his sister before driving down to Toms River....

The body knows. Like my face now, it tracks my history. If I want to know what I've piled up, I ask my heart.

My heart should be holding more than to-dos. It should be expanding in the sun with children, instead of clattering away in here while my daughter sits in the other room. This is what you get, I tell myself.

I let time hem my life in, and those who rattle on about time like crows. And my faults, they remember them, too. In the sheerest of memories, I was perfect to myself. I could do no wrong.