Don’t tell me to breathe.

It’s never as easy as the lift of the chest, 

Or the contraction of the nostrils.

Sometimes that’s all I can do.

Sometimes it’s the one thing I can’t do.

 

Did you know you could survive without air?

I can.

It hurts unbearably,

But I can live without the life sustaining colored wind.

 

Oh, but the cost of such a loss.

To inhale is to take in the whole of the earth,

To be one with the universe.

Entering your body is the carbon from a diamond,

An oxygen atom from the mouth of the prophet,

Molecules from a star, felled millennia ago.

 

Exhaling, you share your story with the future.

An orange tree takes that carbon;

The oxygen merges with a rain droplet destined for a rainbow;

And a mother collects the stardust for an infants blond hair.

 

It’s a connection.

 

But there is the problem.

Isolation steals the breath,

Breaks the connection,

Deprives the body of this vital weave of life.

 

Hold your breath and feel the pain:

It is the depravity of the world,

Your soul losing its way in a black dimension.

 

Too long without this compass,

And the chest compresses,

The soul curls up, helplessly,

Like a child left in the dark.

And nothing can bring it comfort.

 

Until the next breath.