sometimes i wish i wore my words.
i wish i ate them like breakfast.
i wish i spoke them in drafts.
and sometimes i wish my lungs would give out like my pens do.
sometimes i wish someone told me
"it will be this hard everyday,"
after i was born and showed my first sign of life,
breathing,
and i continued to do so everyday.
now, i am on my bed,
a red sock on my right foot,
a blue on my left,
no bra.
breathing doesn't get easier.
breathing is like art.
i practise it everyday and i still cannot seem to find a short cut
or an easy way out
or a solution to the problems i create.
because everyday i breathe, and i breathe and have never stopped.
but breathing must be art.
because, like art, i need it to live.
and i'm like rose petals when i breathe,
my limbs scattered on the hardwood floor,
carelessly,
red.
and a note in my left hand like a cigarette,
a pen in my right like a syringe,
and a bloody nose like it's backed up.
sometimes i wish i could blink
and my breath
would hold still
so i could see the world around me
for what
it really
isn't.
— breathing.
