cpr

can you breathe my life back in?

“life is just

well-played russian roulette

spinning across the yard

bringing us to our ends.”

---

bit-by-bit,

corner by corner,

inky black creeps in.

coughing up

lake-water

and watching memories hit like craters:

sticky fingers and popsicles

under storm-bitten sky.

lung cavity,

brittle and in demise

echoing in gasps of air—

---

i lie there,

orphan to the wind and sky.

god, i wonder if

i took to the sky at this moment,

i would earn wings and fly.

unknown and unknowing,

the lost rather than the loser.

---

am not i

am not i

am not i—

a being,

short-circuiting

and set out to dry.

a muse of townshend himself,

ruined,

dismantled like the guitar he set to flames—

---

coming apart like unspooling thread,

like unspoken dreams and bitter ends.

waiting for a savior

believing i am unsaveable.

the fear collects, streams like water

running to its source.

---

back again,

to the rivers we came from.

am not i

am not i

am not i—

a beast.

cut out from the branches

of the copses of trees.

who would whisper breath

into the gaping mouth of

i?

who would lure life back in,

that luminescent creature—

---

to

i?

breaths come straggling in now,

like

fortresses to climb.

.

.

.

but i am the earth’s child.

and muddy may i get,

fingers soiled and broken,

tainted by the wrong choices,

these lungs belong to me.

this air i breathe—

potent and free

belongs to me.

and so do I,

I,

I,

in all my forms,

being or beast,

water in my chest

or spilling from my eyes.

I am unfixable—

until I believe myself

fixed.

---

you find me there,

sipping from the nectar of life

long before it graces my lips

100 compressions in a minute

push-and-pull

like that of life

steady, never-ending

and transcendent.

you blow breath into my accepting lungs

and I, for the second time

am brought back

to life.

---

“life is just

well-played russian roulette

every spin across the yard

is just another chance to live.”

---