‹ Prequel: In the Month of May
One-Hundred Days
Day Twenty-Five: Breathe Again
You tell me to breathe. You tell me to breathe with my crippled lungs, shot down by the sting of your words and the cold air in my breath. I breathe and expand my crumpled lungs. I wince at the pain, grit my teeth into powder against my tongue. My lungs expand and press against my ribcage, threatening to burst and crack through my skin.
You smile.
You pull apart my broken rib cage, stare with glistening eyes at the travesty of lungs nestled beneath and around a beating heart. You take your hands and smooth over the crinkled paper heart, beating its way from the lungs into your soft hands. You look up at me, surprised.
I shrug.
My heart has a tendency to jump into people’s hands; it just jumps and freefalls into the first pair of hands there to hold onto it.
My lungs huddle into their respective corners, scared and introverted compared to my anticipating anxious heart. You coax them from the shadows of my chest and they come along to your call, frightened and trembling as you examine their crumpled forms. They slowly expand and contract as I focus on my breathing, staring into the ceiling dripping into my half-lidded eyes.
You go on examining my lungs, careful and gentle as you go. I focus on my breathing, slow and steady, scared to stop or to hesitate. My lungs rarely get used and I focus on trying to breathe. It’s a nuisance to me, to constantly have to think about it, to think to myself inhale, exhale.
It’s worse when you’re around.
My breathing hitches, my lungs cave in on themselves. My heart beats all the faster and knocks the fragile forms of my lungs further into their dark corners. I have to think, I have to control every action of my lungs. Things no one thinks about, I constantly control. My lungs are useless, never working, never doing what they are meant to do.
You smooth over my lungs, their shapeless crippled forms falling into your touch. They have never felt such soft hands, only the merciless battering of my butterfly heart.
I focus on the ceiling as you coax my lungs to breathe and take my breath as they should.
I focus on the ceiling as you take my breath away and then give it back, over and over again until I no longer think about my lungs’ actions.
I focus on the ceiling as you teach me how to breathe again.
You smile.
You pull apart my broken rib cage, stare with glistening eyes at the travesty of lungs nestled beneath and around a beating heart. You take your hands and smooth over the crinkled paper heart, beating its way from the lungs into your soft hands. You look up at me, surprised.
I shrug.
My heart has a tendency to jump into people’s hands; it just jumps and freefalls into the first pair of hands there to hold onto it.
My lungs huddle into their respective corners, scared and introverted compared to my anticipating anxious heart. You coax them from the shadows of my chest and they come along to your call, frightened and trembling as you examine their crumpled forms. They slowly expand and contract as I focus on my breathing, staring into the ceiling dripping into my half-lidded eyes.
You go on examining my lungs, careful and gentle as you go. I focus on my breathing, slow and steady, scared to stop or to hesitate. My lungs rarely get used and I focus on trying to breathe. It’s a nuisance to me, to constantly have to think about it, to think to myself inhale, exhale.
It’s worse when you’re around.
My breathing hitches, my lungs cave in on themselves. My heart beats all the faster and knocks the fragile forms of my lungs further into their dark corners. I have to think, I have to control every action of my lungs. Things no one thinks about, I constantly control. My lungs are useless, never working, never doing what they are meant to do.
You smooth over my lungs, their shapeless crippled forms falling into your touch. They have never felt such soft hands, only the merciless battering of my butterfly heart.
I focus on the ceiling as you coax my lungs to breathe and take my breath as they should.
I focus on the ceiling as you take my breath away and then give it back, over and over again until I no longer think about my lungs’ actions.
I focus on the ceiling as you teach me how to breathe again.