honey and sting

the heavy staccato of rain on the skylight,
and learning to place such sounds,
with their slight aura of alarm,
into a file labeled "safe."

like the smell of smoke in new york,
after that terrible day
and those lingering, hallucinatory
months

and conversely, noticing (as others,
after, so vehemently pointed out)
when i've been dissed.
i didn't even hear
the "curse word"

he was angry, but it wasn't at me.
why fret?

and so,
the surprising realization
that amygdala and cortex
don't speak.

there's a committee inside me,
in other words, assessing threat;
sometimes more fiendishly than i,
and sometimes less.

i can only shake my head
and thank all the parties involved
(in myself, in my world, and perhaps
in other realms)
that i'm still here, bewildered,
and wondering.