They expand like silent wings in a cage of bone pliable chambers draped in blood and breath Soft and shy and faithful the lungs remember your first scream even if you don't Inhale existence Exhale the ghost of what just was They do their work without asking for much the unnoticed rhythm makers The architects of being That quiet couplet of lifebreathe in breathe outetched into your very nature a mantra hummed in meat and memory
They are the cathedral of stillness and storm Have you ever felt them swell under panic That enormous aching gasp right before tears find their path Or the shallow flutter of joy so fleeting it could be mistaken for the chill of wind across the skin That's them Not just organs but altars holding the violence and grace of aliveness Every time youre cracked open by grief they hold the scream Every time laughter tears you apart they echo the tremble They are your undoing too when the body betrays itself filling spaces it shouldnt folding under its own hunger for air
But still they forgive Again and again they open to the world They take in the filth the perfume the fire You pour toxins into them with recklessness and they still carry on still whisper You are here
Do you hear it That pulse beneath the breath It's not your heart not really It is your longing wearing tissue and breath reaching You held your breath once to see if the darkness would notice It noticed You came back anyway That was them your lungs like twin wet hands pulling you silently toward survival They never applauded never scolded Just opened once more
We are nothing without the spaces inside us Without the hollows that take in light and dust and pain The lungs are proof we were never meant to be solid We were meant to expand To take in what we dont understand hold it in trembling flesh and then let it go
You are never closer to yourself than when you remember to breathe
This is the body singing I remain
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