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Had I Been Holding My Breath? (Free verse) by Figure 8
Had I been holding my breath anyway?
The news in the doorway slipping over my head like a hood.
I held my breath harder so they wouldn't hear the oxygen sucking in and
out.
The hood is almost a relief.
The waiting is over.
There is a strange comfort in terror.
Those tiny blisters began to apperar on my heart, a shattering sadness
which made me want to rope myself to him and hide under the stairs,
but then I couldn't see his face.
I didn't want to die in the dark.
Had I been holding my breath anyway?
The complete shattering happens quite often.
How many times do I glue it all together before the cracks begin to show?
I panic and take the hood off.
The daylight is too bright but the wool itches my face and I have enough
rashes and don't want him to see me like this on the last day.
No matter how many last days there are, today is the last and only
single last day truth reality.
If he leaves in the big steel refrigerated van I'll have to go back into
my cage at the zoo.
I'll try and hide under the stairs as long as possible, in the blindness,
running my fingers over his photograph. In my knowledge reading it like
Braille.
They'll never catch me if I hold my breath.
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