This prose is dedicated to the boy who may smell a lot like sweat on PE days, but still manages to smell like love if you stand close enough.
-x-
My father once told me you shouldn't breathe in the air of those dying. He said it is the worse kind of stealing. He was kidding of course, but it stayed there at the back of my mind like an old favourite tune. I took him seriously. Yet, I couldn't find the strength in me to not breathe in the calmness of the air surrounding her. How her chest rises and falls faintly as she takes in small sips of air. So, instead of breathing oxygen, I breathed her. Her exhale became my inhale and my inhale became her exhale. We fell into a momentary pattern of being each other's atom, we could even survive under water. We didn't need anything else, we were sustaining each other's life with each breath we expelled. And with each breathe we took in, we were merging into one. But at one point, I must have inhaled too deeply, for when I exhaled, she did not inhale. I wanted so badly to sigh what little air I must have exhaled into her lips in the form of a soft kiss, but I couldn't. Her lungs had given way. Instead, I immediately held my breathe, trying to savour the last drop of her. At her final moment, she still smelled like love, but she smelled a lot more like lost. From that moment on, I was terrified of breathing out. I am living with the constant fear of expelling the remains of her buried deep inside me instead of the 4% carbon dioxide I unknowingly traded her for.
