“We all have different reasons for forgetting how to breathe” - Andrea Gibson.
I can feel you sigh beneath the cracking skeleton of my framework, and it seems like an end. I remember the first time you were ever violated. A boy who had honey dew moonshine trickling down his throat, and silent miracles resting on his fingertips, forged his way beneath the treasure chest of my pain. One by one he pealed back the pencils of my rib cage, ever so gently, making his way in. Those magical fingers punctured your respiratory rhythm and stole the breath from your being in once swift flick of a wrist. I don’t remember feeling anymore close to life and death at one instance. Sometimes, it feels as though there is sheet music scrawled on the inside of your skin. Making melodies every time you come to life. I watch my heart dance to the crescendos of your tidal waves, and it amazes me that I can be beautiful.
One summer, at a lake house and a party and fifty drunk kids, you were replaced for a while. This boy, he spoke in octaves my ears didn’t know existed. His tender touch convinced me that I would melt between his lips, into the ocean I found lulling in his eyes. He locked the bedroom door, and told me to close my eyes. It felt as though he was breathing inside me, as though every time I opened my airways, he was entering and infiltrating every inch of my trembling body. I called him my oxygen over and over in my head, and my heart beat in sync with his movement. Everyone says I lost something that day, but I think I found how to feel. When he made his way out, he scraped past your soft existence, tearing you to the rubble of my rib cage, wilted to nothing but an unneeded lifeline. The thing is, his sleeve got caught in a loop of my heart as he pulled away (and everyone says that he wears his heart on his sleeve, but they’ve got it wrong). I searched for you in the ruins of my of my exhales and inhales. Tried to revive so I could survive, and you came back to me. It was as miracle as watching a popped balloon fly. I promised you then that no man would take your place again.
Still there were days when you got scraped from the surface, and I forgot how to breathe. But that butterfly in your wings kept flying back to my hope and pollinating the belief that was escaping on its tail. You bloomed the day mum came back. I think you hadn’t known that you could squeeze so much happy oxygen into your fibers until it all rushed in at once. Your petals were beautiful.
All of a sudden, life got dark. I found myself sleep walking to the edge of everything I was, dangling, dangling, letting go. We all have different reasons for forgetting how to breathe. I’m sorry this is not forgetting. But it is reason enough.
Be someone else’s beauty.
-The rest of me
“We are Omar Khadr”
“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.”
“Seeing that picture of Che and Lennon playing guitar together sent chills down my spine”
