Poetry Anthology

breathe

My chest feels constricted
My face is wet, stained by salty tears.
There are pins and needles in my fingers and my lips
From the lack of oxygen reaching my lungs.
My breaths are shallow.
Short, rapid, urgent.
I'm gasping
My thoughts are racing.
My body is weakening with each failed attempt to breathe.
I'm light headed and everything I see is a fuzzy mess.
My hand to my chest

I hate this. I hate being weak. Why can't I be strong? Why won't this go away? Why does my body betray like this? Why is this always happening?

A tornado of thoughts race in my head.

You bottle everything up. You feel trapped, stifled like you're suffocating inside. Your body is reacting exactly how one would when suffocated. You've reached your limit, your body is expelling the pent up energy you've left building inside you.

My thoughts continue

When the storm calms and my battle with oxygen diffuses.
An I awake from passing out if it's one of those really bad ones.
I sit curled in puddles of my own tears or lay in bed with my wet pillow as the only evidence of what had happened.

-M