The first shared breath at birth<\/p>\n
The next shared breath in June<\/p>\n
My parents have breath<\/p>\n
and so do I<\/p>\n
we locked up our breath<\/p>\n
in a small trunk<\/p>\n
we can hear it<\/p>\n
everywhere in the house<\/p>\n
everywhere breath is creaking<\/p>\n
back and forth<\/p>\n
as a ship<\/p>\n
the breath<\/p>\n
days tremble now<\/p>\n
as if time is old<\/p>\n
and is not limber<\/p>\n
porches, driveways, stoops<\/p>\n
now rooms<\/p>\n
now parlors<\/p>\n
looking at faces<\/p>\n
looking for naked faces<\/p>\n
looking for nose and mouth<\/p>\n
that will suffocate me<\/p>\n
another breath<\/p>\n
can suffocate me<\/p>\n
as the tally does:<\/p>\n
up, up, steady<\/p>\n
steady up, up, up<\/p>\n
the breath keeps breathing<\/p>\n
we who have seen a ventilator<\/p>\n
push its work into tender lungs<\/p>\n
my own face poison<\/p>\n
my own hands threaten<\/p>\n
hours of home lean delight,<\/p>\n
lean despair,<\/p>\n
tip to contentment, tip to when, when?<\/p>\n
the ship, back and forth,<\/p>\n
and far at sea.<\/p>\n
Decisions build our boxes<\/p>\n
boxes within which we are pitched<\/p>\n
that way,<\/p>\n
and that,<\/p>\n
and seasickness becomes baseline.<\/p>\n
Days are queasy<\/p>\n
breaths are held<\/p>\n
when we land<\/p>\n
we sill will sway.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first shared breath at birth The next shared breath in June My parents have breath and so do I we locked up our breath in a small trunk we can hear it everywhere in the house everywhere breath is creaking back and forth as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1343,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71927,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71846\/revisions\/71927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}