It would start like a bubble
in my seven-year old chest,
An ever-expanding ball of
doom, substituting my breath

I was a child, yet I knew death,
I would try inhale- silence
I would hope it would fix itself
but, when I'd try exhale- silence

There was ugly music though,
It rose as I forced my ribs to expand,
Jarring, polyphonic, cacophony,
Of airways brutally locked and jammed.

When a child learns to measure April
nights, with the hours spent in the pain
Of coughing through close-to-nil breaths,
And breathing through coughing again,

One wonders at the extent of the inhumanity
Of those, who are quick to discreetly say,
"Hush, do not speak of this illness to anyone,
It's no illness at all, in the first place!"

"And, here, take these magic pills and potions,
They're slow but will take away all her agony,
No no, don't listen to those white-coated liars,
You don't need puffs of drugs into her body!"

So I ate all those pills and
Drank all those potions,
And I stayed up those nights,
Waiting for their promised actions,

And I went to school the next day,
Groggy, breathless and sleepy-eyed,
Because not-being-seen with an inhaler was
More vital than the breaths of a seven-year old child.