Teach Me How To Breathe

Shattered dreams lay strewn across,

My feet leaving bloody kisses in farewell.

The window is a splintered mosaic,

Within and without, everything’s broken.

One hesitant finger kills a glassy tile.

Breaking glass breaks my ears.

Moonlight embraces me within

Her folds of cold, lifeless nights.

I can’t see –

Brine drowns my eyes.

Who – who is that?

You sound like Fear,

Sniffing out his prey.

Teach me how to breathe.

I have tears in my lungs.

Air eludes my desperate gasps.

While they smother me with a pillow.

Shush, they tell me –

They place my fist in my mouth.

I suffocate.

But no one will hear you, they say.

I choke.

Don’t die, they tell me.

The morrow won’t part us yet.

Teach me how to breathe.