When I was a little girl, maybe five or six,
I had a really bad cold, and I told my father
that I was scared to go to bed, because
what if I closed my mouth and stopped breathing?
What if I didnāt wake up tomorrow?
He rubbed my back soothingly, and said,
āDarling, no matter what, your body will
always find a way to
breathe,ā
verbāto take oxygen into the lungs and expel it;
we were fifteen when he told me about his mother;
he rarely ever talked about his family,
but he desperately wanted to understand,
and he knew that I knew better than anyone.
He wanted to understand what was happening
as she clutched her chest, and what it was like
to struggle so much, only to have your lungs fail you.
He wanted to understand what
it was like when your body
forgets how to
breathe,
verbāto inject, as if by breathing.
I closed my eyes, and suddenly
I was no longer surrounded by
a mob of people.
It was only me,
and the beat of the drum
vibrating through the floor;
the beat that I felt deep in my chest,
and for the first time in my life,
I knew what it was like to truly
breathe,
verbā to live; exist.
When you tell someone that you want to die,
they donāt really know what to say.
When you tell them about all the times
youāve imagined yourself being hit
by six cars in succession.
Some say, fuck,
some say, fight,
but no one ever says
breathe.