The Breathing Game

Laying a while beside my open window,
in the dawn of the drying day, I let leaves fill my ears
with oceans I’ve never seen,
and stories of the storm I slept through.
Their language, their terminal present—
a balm to my chapped solitude. I watch birds,
maybe starlings, cut a river through the smooth clay sky.
I watch droplets flick from the sharp tips of limbs
as wind dips between their leaves,
all of it shrouded in the sound of sea, of breath.
And I taste my own breath
as I strop my tongue on bedside water,
remembering a time when I was small enough
that this twin bed would have felt royal.
A time I knew only the barest distinction between parent
and child. How I would doze in a hot tangle
of flannel and breath, sinking into the bed
as dad’s chest caved in my little sliver of the earth.
I would try to match his rhythm—
the molasses tempo of his breathing, the damp
burnt scent of it. I would feel my heart surge
each time my lungs overfilled. And in the mirror
where we rose and fell together,
I’d watch us fade into a dizzy darkness as I,
empty-lunged, waited for the hiss of his next inhale.
This game, I played to be as one with him
as I knew I’d once been.
But now, alone, I let each breath become a wish
to never be left, and drift through memory on
a vessel of sound: the wind he’d pull through his nose,
the waves at the shins of a pier,
and the houseplants, here beside the window, fluttering
as they turn my breath into sugar.

Samuel Burt is a poet and artist from Iowa who is currently pursuing his poetry MFA at Bowling Green State University. A winner of the AWP Intro Journals Project, Sam's work has been featured in a number of online and print journals, including Indigo, Salt Hill, Empty House, Stonecoast Review, and The Journal.