Breathe

Meditation for me is about reminding myself to breathe. About reminding myself to allow myself to breathe. About taking in each breath and letting it nourish my starving cells, and about letting each exhalation whisk away that which is nothing short of poisonous. I inhale and feel the resistance of a body struggling to survive an invisible pain. My lungs push against each inward breath as if it to refuse it, like children determined to get their way. But I am still here. I am still breathing, which must mean I am stronger than all of this. But it is difficult to be strong in a way that no one can see. It is difficult to allow the air to flow freely when you know so many others would have severed its passages. I sometimes lose the words for which I have been searching just to keep this rhythm going. Like fireflies.

I look at the words I have written on paper, today and over time, seeing their curves disappear long before I even noticed mine. Words about life and love written before I knew anything about either. Words. Not breaths. And I notice through all the stories of pain, and of passion, and of promises to myself written on post-it notes along the way, that life is so much easier to live in words than in breaths. It is easier to live eternally than to allow yourself to float towards the sun on the wings of your mortality.

I have been watching the wax drip. And I have been missing all the light permits me to see.

I want to be able to have breaths without counting them.
I want to be happy with a life that cannot be measured.

I may be capable of inhalation and exhalation.
But I have lost the ability to breathe.

I am scared, always.