breathing
is really more important than the other in-and-outs,
and it’s never consciously thought about
until the final one, in that stark white hospital
room
where family sits together, in quiet grief.
the empty shell cleaned, now unfurnished of blood,
getting smaller and smaller and that
is
the way we all go after being, our undoing.
all the stories that made us us, told you what we were,
all connected by these little words
only
to be forgotten, not amounted to much, there
may be others but just a few who scratch
their name somewhere, to be seen to break through,
born
under the lights, to brightly shine, made all
fresh and new, furnished again with blood.
a tiny temple, a clean empty shell
with
first breaths made together, familiar families
sit again in familiar rooms, in familiar places.
going home with more to include, in this
space
where new blossoms bloom, grass grows,
streets lights wander up to the mountain skies
where new stories are born in the twinkle of an eye.
Shared with dVerse MTB: taking a fine line down where I have reused the line ‘breathing room is only born with space’ from my own poem from a couple of days ago, ‘On The Usefulness Of Emptiness’. This line is then used as a word acrostic and each stanza defines (somewhat, in my case) the meaning of the word. The prompt and my write was inspired by Laura Bloomsbury’s poem ‘An unbundling’.
I started writing this thinking about my mother passing away on the other side of the world from me. My cousin was there holding her hand as she took her last struggling breath after a couple of years of suffering with COPD. This then unconsciously took a turn towards the circle of life.
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
1994ever 