What do you when you start to feel like you can’t breathe again? Your chest gets heavy, and a simple inhale hurts so bad a tear twinges at your eyes. My chest, my lungs heaving as if I ran ten miles, but here I am sitting on my bed in the dark grasping at my chest, the burning of a decade of cigarettes beating me down to the point of where if I try to stand my knees would give and I would lay an empty puddle on the cold hard floor.

A.C.

how you can look at me that way and in the same breath say you feel nothing

Gentle breaths, huffs, escape your sweet kiss-swollen lips.
At the feel of your heartbeat, my own wildly skips.
I am content right here with your head on my chest.
I will hold you close, dear, while you’re taking your rest.

I want to become part of you the way the wind becomes oxygen
in your lungs, and the way you cannot breathe when you are without me.

Every breath, a weight
on my chest, reluctantly
comes, being chased
only by my
quickening pulse.
A knife slips between
my ribs and with
every word that passes over my lips, it
twists.
A silent scream is trapped
behind my teeth.
Butterflies with knives
are cutting up
my insides.


Found poem from Automatic Loveletter's song "Butterflies"

My ears hear static
The sirens so loud
I open my mouth to scream
But the words won't come out

My stomach knotted
The falling sensation won't stop
Nausea fills my chest
I try and take a deep breath

As all my warning signs go off