Deep inhale...
New air fills my lungs.
For the longest time,
I couldn't breath...
The weight,
the crushing presence;
the mask.
Too much to bear.
A weight no longer.
The mask removed.
Yet, as clear air caresses my skin,
the phantom weight remains...
trying to pull me d
                                  o
                                     w
                                         n.
A ghost of who I used to be
nagging at the back of my mind,
relentlessly.
Can I get back there...
To who I used to be?
Or am I stuck between the thing I was
and the new being, forged through pain
and raised in fire?