Cresting over the skin with a razor, a young woman learns the ins and outs of the society she is in, the blood and tears it takes to be seen, and for someone to love her back, all the while, a Swiss boy, age eight or nine, steals their mother’s makeup and paints on a smile, knowing just how, on the inside, the norms are becoming ever more fragile.

As our city breathes its crowded air, a little boy tries to stifle a heaving sob so that his *****-furious father won’t hear his lack of 11-year-old testosterone and teach him another hard lesson about being a man; six miles northeast of the boy, an undergraduate studying to be a teacher breathes deeply with self-satisfaction because eight months ago to the day he made the decision to stop inhaling and exhaling the skunk-smelling substance that dulled his own mind and hurt his chances of sharpening minds younger than his.

The two of them don’t know yet, but each stifled or satisfied breath brings them closer together, and they’ve needed each other for months—after the young man earns a diploma and the young boy earns his first locker: both will teach each other to feel proud; both will motivate each other to grow stronger; both will, unknowingly, lead each other to a resolute vitality without fear or shame or guilt because

both
will
breathe

and feel whole
and feel empowered
and feel strong  
and feel ready

to breathe wonderfully deep again and again and again.

Morning after morning, the wrinkled man rises with the sun, pours a cup of coffee, sitting—listening for the train to roar by, the same track a much younger man, is cramming his brain full of numbers by, to get where he wants to go, an engineer, who was fascinated by trains at an early age.

As the city continues to grow crowded, and concrete confines the mind, the birds up north begin their epic journey, breaking free, leaving their homes behind, from high above the year’s first snow, the birds must think, I bet humans wish they could fly away from it all.

Down the hatch it went
A lit match
With an aged twist
Friends warn you
Of what’s to come
Tellin’ you
The end is no longer out of sight
Your body craves it
Your arms shake
As you laugh on
Trembling through the night
Swallowing
A lit match
With an aged twist

She was young
She was so independent
Parents cry—
About the wrongs she committed

They don’t try
They never try

But she doesn’t mind
She is young
And parents cry—
When their children outgrow their fantasy

This love is ****** and raw
This love is so sweet
This love is youthful
This love is free
This love is spontaneous yet steady
This love is complete
This love—
Is on repeat