Tonight, after a long day at work attending to the emotional needs of both children and let’s be honest, adults too, I’m trying to hold down the universe by sitting in my recliner and thinking about how objects like myself are composed mostly of space and imagination.

From my leather spaceship, I can almost see the purple solar winds approaching this gold-plated shield-like moment I’ve created out of the shuttle repair instructions my therapist has helped me understand with the help of my astronaut inner child who’s made it his mission in life to take on the star-filled space monster of uncertainty.

This activity, which time and time again has helped me navigate the nuclear thread connecting the unconscious barf-chunk idea you only want to expel to the bombshell experience of being found by conscious realization, is a far cry from just sitting in a chair in front of the television until you become a map of a city from 100 eons ago not even your blue, alien girlfriend alter ego will want to look up at.

It’s like how in the mornings before work, when I read and write poems that feel like the sun is rising over the edge of my coffee cup, I’ll look out the window from the captain’s cabin in my head and think about how the thought of a future is really a thought of a past that’s already happened, but that just hasn’t landed on me yet.