Breathe.
I'm the world record champion for holding my breath. I held my breath once for twenty minutes. Then I held it for five months. Then I held it for one year.
The ghosts stole my breath and replaced it with shattered glass that got caught in my lungs until I was exhaling blood where the carbon dioxide should be. Then I coughed out all the glass and picked up a pocket of air that was hiding at the back of my closet. I swaddled it like a baby and kissed its forehead. As I did, the breath found its way back in.
My eyeliner wings were blacker and longer and the breath had a faint air of raspberries and happiness as it caressed the world around it.
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I've held my breath all my life, waiting for a lighter air. Not sure if I'll ever find it.
ReplyDeleteEBBA JADE. How do you do this? So beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a delicate piece. The last little stanza is perfection.
ReplyDelete'k A!!! Beautiful! beautiful, so very peaceful... I can feel the air return to my lungs...
ReplyDeleteOh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
ReplyDeleteMy eyes are full after this, and my heart. Full like the moon, full like your lungs with a year's worth of breath, a calendar swallowed and kept. You write so beautifully that it almost hurts to read - the way the sun hurts your eyes when you look directly at it. This post reminds me of a frozen river - beautiful but frightening, all that power beneath it but it could craze into a thousand cracks at any moment and leave you stunned in its cold, or drowned beneath its broken weight. Just beautiful - I could read this over and over.
There is something very soothing about your writing. I like the way it slowly takes me to places unheard of.
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