from the lungs

I have no idea why sometimes I tighten and only slightly release when she breathes. It's a stuck feeling that moves into her eyebrows when I try to figure it out. I think she's scared. I think the world feels too big and she things that she can fit it in her arms. When will she ever figure it out?

You'd think breathing would make it easier. But sometimes it only gets harder, tighter, more complex.
Is it that I hold it all for her? That instead of releasing and letting go, I pull in?

She ate steak wheels last night. They were wrappings of hammered, flattened meat stuffed with spinach and garlicky butter. Some things are better all wrapped up in flattened, hammered meat, but spinach is not one of those things.  It gets soggy and grainy. Slimy even. The garlic and sodium infusions only mask the ickiness. The flavor infusions do not enhance the overall taste and instead become associated with slimy, icky spinach.

I wonder if that's how the fear works inside her heart?
It gets rolled and pummeled into the red flesh only to become a slimy mess.
The flavor-mocking achievement and keep-it-all-togetherness, like the garlic and sodium of the beef wrapped spinach,  are only associated with the terror.