Is there a time when you wake up like a person breaking through the surface of an ocean and drawing a deep breath?

Air is life and your throat is a umbilical cord connecting you to it. But other things are life as well. They require you have such a percent of a harmful material.

Do you shudder at the thought of what you were? Of course, of course you do. Go back? Never. But why are you left bruised by the memory as if jealous of yourself being so… free, or complicated, or something. Why are you not happier to have pushed through your own skin to emerge something new?

I have done that. I am still shaking it off like a passing thunder shower. There is a place in my head that has clouded over and needs to clear.

And like that, it’s gone.

Tags: poetry