Sometimes I Feel My Heartbeat in My Hands

Sometimes I feel my heartbeat in my hands
and I remember that I am here and I am real and I am alive. 
Blood pumping, lungs circulating; 
heart beating in my hands. 

Sometimes I catch myself worrying about my lungs, 
about the inhale and the exhale that comes after.
I start to panic, and, just like that, 
I forget how to breathe.

I think of when I got knocked down by a wave and couldn’t get back up, 
how I thought that it would suck me off the shore 
and I swallowed the sea and I worried I would never feel dry again.
I think of the shower on east 10th street where I sat fully dressed 
as the tap flooded down and soaked my clothes and submerged my face 
and I began to hyperventilate, and I thought it would never end 
and that I would cry forever. 
I think of my fear of tunnels, 
and of how every time I pass through 
I worry that one day when I’m inside bumper to bumper
the walls will collapse and the water will pour in and I will drown right there as I sit in traffic, 
praying to a god that is busy elsewhere 
that I will live to gasp for air.

I think about you too, 
and what you must have felt when you stopped breathing, 
what it must have been like in the moment when you realized there was no more air.

And then, I do my best to focus on the heartbeat in my hands
and I use it as a metronome: 
inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale; in time 
with the beating of my heart

Cat Newton is a native New Yorker who studied literary nonfiction at Columbia University. She spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about writing, and sometimes even succeeds in doing it.