My thoughts slowly slip through my stagnant lips with every exhale
My worries and my fears escape through my pores
The thick weight of responsibility dissipates, hollowing my bones.

I fill my body with breath and salt and sand and sun
I fill my body with breath until every neglected cavity is illuminated and
Every vital piece of me is enveloped in airy peace
I fill it until I am light enough to swim in sunlight
I fill my body until I grow large enough to be seen from the edge of the universe.

I am called, not by name, but by the grandiose water warriors that wage a war within the waves
I wonder to myself, are the crashes and cries of the waves of pleasure or pain?
Their tiny foot soldiers invade my quiet meditation
And I begin to defend my exposed skin against the grainy troops.

The receding tide seems to have slowed time with it’s leisurely pattern
Minutes and hours and days all dance past me to the beat of a nearby drum
And the ever present sun heats my body
Beginning with the soles of my feet and the crooks of my elbows
It seeps through each layer until my heart struggles to pump my boiling blood.
Through the comfortable darkness, a playful light jitters just above my eyelids
It taints the usual blackness, leaving me gazing into a flaming abyss.

An affectionate breeze bathes me with reassuring coolness
And kisses my burning skin with it’s gentle lips
The wind’s frigid fingertips awaken
Every pore, every hair follicle, every minuscule portion of my surface area
And abandons my mass as abruptly as it had greeted me

I am deflated, as seventeen years escape in a hiss through a gap in my teeth
My lungs collapse, with the sweetest sigh of relief
And releases my contents in a single


Exhale.