When was the last time that you took a full breath?
And don't tell me "on the weekend" or when you got home today.
I mean without that feeling like your throat might close in halfway through.
A breath    
           without a stress headache pulsating in the background.
I mean without your sleeplessness telling you to slow your breathing
to lay down a while,
take another breath
and another
and close your eyes.
I mean a breath before the long nights, the headache-blurred vision and this brutal self evaluation.
a breath  
            not taken underwater.
Not taken with your own hands threateningly clasped around your throat, only letting go long enough to make strokes to drive yourself under further.
You've swum so deep hoping the pressure will hold you together by sheer force, but by the time your bubbles of alarm reach the surface now they'll be too small to notice.
You think
that if you pile enough things on yourself
you wont be able to fly away.
Your dream of release is to crack into hundreds of pieces
disintegrate
finally
from the pressure you're applying from inside
and float to the surface.
You imagine it constantly.
You hear smashing mirrors
You hear windows on the brink of breaking,
squeaking in protest.
You hear glass hitting floor in crashes
but also like chimes.
You see visions of spectrums
refracted in your shards
when you hear that range of sound in your midnight imaginings
that taste like guilt.
The art of those colors,
the music of that sound,
is so alluring.
So you do- you shatter.
Crystal walls to scattered fragments that litter the floors.
You start to collect yourself
in the sinister triangles and unidentifiable shapes
that lay like splinters of a tree hit by lightning on the ground.
You'll put them together again.
You'll make art out of what was broken for so long.
You see that now,
your stark fractions have long crashed,
snapping as you walk
rattling in shining scraps
sharp on the edges
like shards of broken conscience.
You're tired of leaving a fine dust
everywhere you walk
because of the grinding every move produces.
Tired of leaving glass slivers in all that you touch.
You're frantically trying to reassemble yourself.
You'll be better this time.
But are you sure you have enough glue?

You're tainting the pieces as they cut you.
Your hands were worn before
but now they're bleeding
and scarred forever.
You hated the glass shifting inside you
but now it's embedded in your hands
and never changes.
You're like a frozen reflection
of off-kilter fragments hastily thrown back together
in the smooth mirror that you so envy.
Your cracks are now immortalized
like paintings
in the stories that the pains in your palms tell
as a new sliver resurfaces everyday.
So what do you do?
Can you melt yourself down,
knowing that being melted
you'll lose that last shred of self?
Somehow you know you'll be recast in an image not your own.

At least in pieces you were still yourself.

You've forgotten about exhaling in your efficiency.
It serves no purpose other than to allow you to fill your lungs again
so you endlessly breathe in,
your breaths becoming more
and more
and more shallow,
and if you only took the time to breathe properly
then you wouldn't have to learn to live
with how those bits of yourself sound as they shift,
because exhaling
would let them fall
into place.