There in his chest is a heart that tilts and pitches. He can keep its beats slow and smooth, quell its habits of fear or panic or impulse, stop it yearning too much for home, curb its unhelpful states of abandon. Calm and steady, calm and steady. Metronome pacing out the breath. Yet still at times it tilts and pitches. It wants what it wants and hopes what it hopes and needs what it needs and loves what it loves. So strenuously unrobotic is the astronaut’s heart that it leaves the earth’s atmosphere and it presses out – gravity stops pressing in and the counterweight of the heart starts
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