Take deep breaths- deeper- deeper still.
Shake your head, squeeze your eyes closed and open.
Keep striding through the night- faster- faster still.
Tighten the straps on your backpack until it squeezes
your shoulders like someone grabbing you from behind.
Listen to the sounds of the breaths that you keep *******.
Clench your hand around the old receipt in your jacket pocket
rub it between your fingers until blisters form like mountain ranges
between two tectonic plates.
Walk- power walk- breathing deeper still-
up the steep and winding hill, away from the street lamps.
There’s not enough
air
to fill the heaving, squeezing lungs.
Vision blurs, white noise.
Out-of-body weightlessness.
Feeling nothing, your brain a loud buzz of
desperation.
Sensing almost nothing
except for that insatiable breath.
Keep hauling the body
in a state of emergency
past the other ones who walk about.
One of them whoops- hollers- laughs.
Let a breathy sob escape into the night,
and wonder- cursing the noise of joy- how they can be happy
when you’re anything but.
Soon, in a moment of
clarity,
the lungs let up on their erratic work.
Reach the level grass at the top,
like a parachute dropped from an airplane.