After all this compression, perhaps I am becoming something after all. Crawling away from my potential worth I feel myself writhing my way from between the rocks, taking quick, shallow breaths —learning to breathe again after all this time. Each inhale still feels heavy and constricted, and every exhale still brings a sense of dread for the rise and fall of my chest but I am moving forward. Even relieved, my ribcage is adjusting painfully to the freedom, coping with more lung space; a gift I received from you.

O formless one
naked are we and outstretched, unobstructed
we have smashed the dead symbols together
to try to make a few useful pieces of flighted existence
walking through charcoal ashes
Carbon

Carbon is carbon is carbon-

the skeleton key, vitally

important and wholly ununique.

And I am she is me,

diamond so tough that only it

can scar itself,

graphite that is written and 

crumbled and erased.

In the air you breathe out,

pleasant for trees but otherwise

deadly, and

trees are trees are trees,

rooted to the spot without me,

taking in the byproduct of our

existence and using it to outlive

us all, to change and fall

and grow again. 

Count to ten and then

reach for the sky to the place

where trees climb people,

and remind themselves not 
to die

while the people’s hands 
stretch and
close around carbon,

tethered by
ineraseable existence,

trying to breathe.