“Breathe” by A.L. Michaelson
I am yours
As much as the air I breathe
Is wholly mine.
You cycle me through your lungs
And exhale me out-
Any little bit to keep living-
And I am a little more changed
Each and every time.
I exist around you, and inside you,
But am none the more visible
Just easily forgotten and replaced.
I would watch you suck in Soot,
Ash,
Smoke,
And wondered why that was
So much more appealing than
Something so crystal clear?
You could drag on me-
You dragged me,
Until I crumbled beneath your
Fingertips, and yet
You were never satisfied.
If smog was what you preferred,
I realized I needed to
Cover myself in smoke to
Continue being
Breathed in.
What is the point of air if not
To keep something living?
What was I keeping alive?
Newly defiled and unfiltered,
I knew that this was how I might
Finally be seen.
But I never realized that it wasn't that
You loved smoke more than air.
You certainly didn't love air as smoke.
It must be that you simply wanted
To enjoy the ash,
While you knew you had dependable oxygen
To keep you going
After your smoke breaks.
No one can live in only smog.
So I took my own deep breath,
And filled again with clean, cold
Air-
And blew it all out again.
You were upset that I blew the smoke away
Too.
And once again, I was invisible,
But wholly yours,
While you looked for more cigarettes to burn.
About A.L. Michaelson
She/Her/Hers
A. L. Michaelson whittles away the hours of the night writing, after spending busy days in Colorado either teaching or volunteering at a non-profit. For a long while, Michaelson feared the greatest piece of writing she would ever produce was a unicorn story when she was seven. Luckily, she might not have peaked just yet. Michaelson is thrilled to have the opportunity to share her voice- a voice that analyzes the past and pulls lessons, sometimes warnings, from it. Along with working on poetry, Michaelson has a novel she is finishing. In her very spare time, she enjoys hiking and working with animals.