I was born to a woman who smoked cigarettes
and since I was a child, I tried to inhale blueberries until they
stalled my windpipe.

My mother taught me that word –
windpipe – after she coughed for hours upon hours. I
was so happy that day, imagining how I must have swallowed
windchimes for the doctors who helped birth me
in December’s final snow –
how I hoped they believed I sounded pretty, although

covered in that sop adults call life juice. Life juice sounds nice
but I had known babies who
came just as sticky as me and never got to breathe.

Windchimes, you know, the things
beautiful ladies in ankle-length dresses hang outside,
my daddy lived thirteen hours down the interstate and I knew
somehow that he owned one.

In my dreams, I touched it
and pulled on it. I twisted the copper-ends up like my
momma’s hair and pretended we were with my dad by some
lake where the breezes are heavy enough and I
am small enough for them to carry me up, up, and away.

Everyone insisted that windpipes are inside
while windchimes stay out –

I fixed that problem, too. I tried three times to plant chimes in
my ears, unglue parts of the skin there from myself
to make room for dangly jewelry. A tiny
slit was all I needed, but it would not stay open for long

and I never got to swing my head
pretend I possessed the ability to create music like how God
let my momma grow smoke. I never got to exhale.