giving up on breathing i sat on a mountain yesterday and stared at the sea and ate a fish with a hook still in its mouth and tried to notice how clean the air was and my sisters off to vienna with her husband and at the back of my mind somewhere i keep saying, at least she's happy and in vienna and then my chest feels less tight and making music with my brother is the gasp for breath when i occasionally surface (and it's ours and we feel that) and my parents are bickering which means they've decided to love each other this month and they sigh and they sigh and my girlfriends talk to me with familiar voices and i swallow down the sobs and listen to their exhalation and k showed up like mary poppins to compare old wounds and we smile like grandpas and allow ourselves to be proud and ask/tell each other --remember how we met to vent? and how we've been venting ever since? and him. there's him. (i know, there's always a him) this particular him is my friend who broke my heart a long time ago who tells me how much he resents worry and seems to talk to me only when there's reason to worry but he stopped talking today and i'm trying not to be sad about it because i know that means he's better, which is what always happened before (he'd probably say i'm reading too much into it) but he's not saying anything i walked into it. i know. and i'd do it again. i'm trying not to be sad about it. oh fuck it. i'm sad about it. i'm tired of these overwhelming oh wells. but since i've been walking into things my feet see no point in stopping and tomorrow i'm seeing fresh (i think it's appropriate to call her this again, fitting in with the older and newer theme) --- one night when i was a kid i realized on my bed that i was breathing and i got scared that if i stopped thinking about it, i'd stop breathing and i'd die i'd die in this bed and they'd just think i was asleep and it lasted hours, hauling up my lungs, crushing them together it was so hard to give up it was necessary and it was inevitable but it was so damn hard |