He was a Breathtaker. A royal, high-class, naturally-born, take-it-or-leave-it Breathtaker. I had never seen one before in real life, only heard about them in the tales of a girl's childhood.

The first day he took my Breath was in a parking lot. He stood there alone in the parking lot, with his sparklers in hand, and wrote words in the air for no one but himself to see. He hummed while he wrote, haphazardly opening his mouth slightly, in a never-ending melody.

Later, I found out that the words he wrote in the air would later be turned into music, beautiful songs that could lift your feet off the ground and give your soul the wings to fly. But this first night, I knew nothing of the breathtaker's ability to create such beauty.

The lit end of the sparkler seemed to be a metaphor for the Breathtaker's aura. Shining, energetic, with a tendency to mezmerize. One didn't want to stop watching his mind at work.

So I sat there in the grass and watched him. Looking at the swift motion of his arms, I became entranced by the passion with which he worked. So quickly, I couldn't even pick up much of what he was writing. One could easily tell, however, that he wasn't going to forget a word of it.

I, however, had brought my typewriter for such an occasion. I sat there and typed words that he made me feel. The first line was "intrigue. night sky. man. electricity fingers. fizzled feelings. stranger. lips. curls. air. no breath."

And so my Breath was hardpressed to move. It entered my mouth and stopped, right below my soft palette, not wanting to enter further. My Breathing was very shallow, almost a soft hyperventilation, caught between time moving and time paused.

Solve the addiction with a curious puzzle
Cure the remedy with a gracious smile
Grace the presence of a Lord never seen
And see the sun rise by a broken man’s hand.

Snap the twig that bends the senses
Sense the dangerous game of wits
Outwit the gent who’s gummy skin
Stains the tendons, we breath from within.

Staining the tendons cost you your life.
Stain them all you want, they will bleed no less.
Do you see the logic in the ropes I bind you with?
You can’t break luck like you break those dimes.

Wake up tomorrow and face your face, not mine, not theirs, but yours.
I doubt you’ve challenged yourself to this before
Shells have protection, cheese molds with time, forks break and bend and spark
Are you hiding, or is this the mirror you throw at me, whistling through your teeth.
Do you break dimes to scratch protein from under your nails?

I make sense if you look at this not as a riddle
For it’s not, merely lines of interconnecting senseless thought.
But is it really senseless, when in our world of ‘sense’
We hardly ever make any?

Look at your tendons- you’ve stained them yellow
Patterns of the Lord like the church windows I know
Glazed over with skin, hiding the yellow
Biting the yellow in your gummy-*** skin.

She stares at the floor. She has to be dreaming. She can’t believe it actually happened. She’s in shock, a deep shock vibrating her core and numbing her skin.

She shivers, and looks up at the ceiling, where drops of blood fall into a small puddle on the clean linoleum below.
A small trickle of water seeps in from the laundry room to her left, and the clear veins of water glide around her extended foot, attracted to her self-loathing tension. The water knows what she’s done, knows it can’t fix her and wants to be a part of this torture in her soul.

She kicks the water away, futilely and desperately. This is the most movement she’s taken since she came downstairs, and it is the opening of the reservoir of tears within her. She sobs, huge racking sobs that convulse every fiber of her being.

She hates herself. She hates herself. She takes her fist, and she punches. Anywhere and everywhere she can hit. Her legs, her neck, her stomach, her chest. Anything she can do to herself to make herself feel, to make herself hurt. She needs to be punished.

She knows that she deserves to die, but she isn’t sure if she has the guts or selfish selflessness to do it. The gun lays on the tile across the room, it’s barrel turned toward the wall in cowardice. She scoots over to it and picks it up. In her mind it burns her hand, but she holds on strong. This pain is nothing to her.

She slowly finds the strength to stand up, and squints her puffy eyes to hide herself as she walks past the mirror. She has to crawl up the steps. She didn’t realize she was so weak, but she’d looked at the clock on the way up, and she’d been sitting there bawling for over four hours.

At the top of the steps, she loses her breath. Her lithe, agile body isn’t tired, but she sees his foot, carelessly hanging out into the hallway where he fell. She can’t go on yet. She looks at the gun, still in her hand. It’s her light, her only exit sign.

She walks on, into the bedroom, stepping over his foot. She squats down beside his head and looks at his pale, sunken face. His body is already well into the process of rigor mortis, and it flushes her hopes that he’ll sit up and say, “Boo.”

Tears are streaming down her face, a hurt so intense, so overwhelming, that she is not even aware she is crying once more.

Finally, she’s done looking at him. She cannot grasp that she did this to him, and yet her hands apparently can. They put the barrel of the gun to her head, and she inhales sharply without exhaling. The cold barrel feels hot against her temple, and it slides a centimeter from her perspiration and the pressure she’s applying. Maybe if she just pushes it into her temple hard enough, it will take care of itself, and she won’t have to pull the trigger.

She lets go of all pretenses, and time seems to pause as she pulls the trigger. She drops, falling onto his body before her. Her tears roll down his stomach, the force of gravity in action.

Sick little spies in the back of my mind, lend me your ear.
Let me ****** you into leaving this place.

Allow me to introduce myself.
A phantom of a long gone time,
I have come to haunt the shadows here now.

I'd like to cleanse you of your sorrows,
separate the shelves we once painted.
You let them get dusty, grime and mold reigns.
Have you forgotten what it felt to hold my hand?

I'll leave you be when you look me in the eye,
a task not fit for a king.
But your crown is now shriveled,
my silver lining formed your second-place noose.

So just remember, remember, the sun always sets
in the place where darkness lived before.

You will be found out, you will be taken apart,
and this king's throne will be held by one more endearing.
They shant be amazed, no tears will be shed for your death.
Simply an empty shelf, a clean mind, and a satisfactory taste for disdain

In her shadow you hid and bade your time, all the while looking like something she could love.
Yet she only saw you in the dark, playing the part of something she could love.
The day she found a flashlight and struck your moths askew was the day she sent you spiraling to the ground.
Do you know, oh do you know, what you did to her?

Now you jump from window to window, seeking the shelter of the darkness when she blinks.
You’re scared of imperfection in her thoughts, yet tomorrow you’ll see you’re as imperfect as it gets.
You tricked her into thinking you could help her with it all and she saw.
She sent you scurrying back to the shadows to dissolve calm widows there.

But she’s scared you’ll worm your way back to her brain-- you’re already planting seeds of relapse there.
So she swore to someone more faithful than you that what you are will not infect her brain anymore.
She was tolerant, let you bend her backbone, now she’s rigid, standing straight as stone.
She isn’t breaking and won’t bend for you anymore.

This someone she swore on everything to will do what it takes to make sure you’re gone.
So stay away, we don’t need your discomforting stare ruining our dreams anymore.

Hello there. You seem a bit uneasy. Look around, and let me explain.

This is your funeral. I am your funeral. This is your casket. I am your casket, the black balloons, the flowers placed strategically around the room. One flowerpot per five square feet, like your brother ordered. This is the scientifically proven amount of flowers to keep grieving people at a calm level. These flowers are the happy facade behind which grief lies. These flowers are pretty deceit. I am the crying faces, begging to talk to you one last time. I am every tissue that will be picked up and disposed of by the janitors after the grievers return to their lives.

I am your death. I am your last breath, your last sentence, the cancer you battled with for the last three years of your life. I am every doctor's appointment, every shot that left you bedridden for the next two days. I am every particle of hair you watched go down the drain in the shower. I am every strange look, uncomfortable glance you received. I am all the tears shed after your diagnosis, and every benefit held in your honor. I am every sacrifice your family made to attempt a wall of happiness around your sickness.

I am the birth of your only grandson, the beautiful boy of your only beautiful girl. I am the scary morning spent in the waiting room of the hospital. I am every doubt you and your wife had about your grandson's condition. I am the condition that made him two months premature. I am his three weeks spent in an incubator, and the formula he was fed to stay alive. I am the relief your family felt when your daughter and grandson were released, both completely healthy. I am your grandson's first, second, third, fourth birthdays.

I am your retirement. I am the completion of your life's most well-known activity and purpose. I am the years you now plan on traveling and raising your future grandchildren. I am the mornings you will now spend waking up next to your wife, the woman you've been married to for thirty years now, your best friend. I am the breakfast you will make her in bed and the organizations you plan to join in all your free time. I am your old cat you will sit on your porch and pet. I am the party and the gifts you were given, and the flat, insincere Happy Retirement cards that were obligatorily sent to you by your co-workers. I am this last milestone of your life.

I am your daughter's high school graduation. I am the lip-biting your wife partook in as she walked up and shook hands with the principal. I am her boyfriend, who sat beside you two and joined in the clapping, eyes watering for the girl he loved. I am the marriage they would agree to and abide by for the rest of their lives. I am every late night she was out, every test she was nervous about. I am the teacher who called you complaining about her unorganization. I am the cat she brought home one year, promising to take care of. This cat outlived even you.

I am the loss of your virginity. I am the party you mistakenly went to, and the alcohol you mistakenly drank. I am the girl who mistakenly came into the bathroom and held your hand while you puked. I am the drug she took prior to walking in, and the bed she led you to. I am the feeling you were given in the morning, the feeling of the realization of loss versus gain.

I am the day you met your wife. I am the book section of the retail store you both were perusing. I am your heart beating quickly as she smiled, and your hand sweating in your pocket. I am the beauty you saw in her. I am the money you saved up at your after-school job and the Italian restaurant you took her to for your first date, and I am the city in Italy you took her to for your honeymoon. I am the mistakes you both made and all the hours spent awaiting forgiveness.

I am your childhood. I am your first few friends. I am the bone in your foot, broken by a nasty fall. I am the bridge you were playing on and the cast you wore for a month. I am the day you learned how to whistle and the day you learned how to read. I am every birthday party you have ever been given, and every candle you blew out. I am your first word, your first step.

I am your first breath. I am the decision your mother made to keep you. My how easily all of this could have never been.

I am all the sadness you have ever felt, and I am all the joy. And it has all led up to this day. This funeral, this event catered by a food company and paid for by the government and a savings account made for this day. I am that government you lived under, and that savings account you worked so hard for.

And as of today, I am just a memory. I am simply the memory of your life. I am simply the collection of days and days and years, and times. And now, I am gone.

You were sick, and we stole all the stars for you. Placed them in our knapsack and traveled all the way up the mountain at midnight. We let the stars out into the very tip-top of the stream, the very point of origin. At the bottom, you sat with your camera and captured the stars making there way through the stream to the very bottom. Before we left, I was sure to add a large portion of the stars back into my knapsack. I didn't want this to be the end of the stars. The picture was beautiful, breath-taking, and we put it in the largest frame we could find in the living room.

Before that, we'd stolen all the music for you. We gathered a big, mesh net, with large holes, and stood along the border of the place where songs play. As they traveled, we swept them up. The prettier the music, the bigger notes, so we caught only the most beautiful of sounds. We made a moat around your house and placed these melodies inside. When we stole the stars, I added the few from my knapsack into the moat as well. The stars sparkled and the melodies resounded and it was a place of peace.

Lastly, we found the feelings. We went to the building in which tension ebbs and flows like the aromas of sweets at the bakery. They were colored with the connotations they implied. We hand-picked the peace, the passion, the joy, the gratitude. They were green, purple, orange, and navy blue. To balance it out, we picked up red anger, black grief, and white innocence as well.

We came home to your moat and poured them in. The sight and sound was beautiful. We were finally finished. We had helped. This was going to be enough to fix you.