cookies
Vegan chocolate chip cookies. Photo: Kari Sullivan. Creative Commons, 2.0

What Anxiety Attacks Are Made Of

Yesterday, the answer was sugar and spice and everything nice.

I was having an almost perfect day modeling the new Zen.

I try not to think on how the collapsing Western imaginary throws the Republic out with the bathwater.

I am surrounded by cared-for plants and animals.

I take time to compliment the sun on its transit.

A light, California-Thai lunch, boosted with some borrowed Kaffir-Limes.

A first twinge, when I realize that I really ought to call them Makrut.

I water the tomatoes listening to David Harvey lecture on the labor theory of value.

Toward late afternoon, I decide to celebrate my equanimity by making cookies.

The oven warms, and as I crack eggs into the dry ingredients, I smell something odd.

I open the oven door, and there I see it: M’s only N95 mask, melting obscenely on the metal racks.

I am breathing the toxic plastic of the breath protector. It’s like seeing inside your own eyeball.

I scream FUCK! twice in rapid succession.

All four dogs run into the narrow galley kitchen, barking wildly.

The cookies are a toll house, and I must pay the fare.