The Weight of Air, a poem

Someone took the air out of the room...

no.

Someone laid something heavy across my chest

and called it grief,

and now every breath

has to fight its way through.

No one told me

grief has weight.

That it would sit on me

like a stone,

like a body,

like your absence, given form...

and breathing,

the thing I never had to think about,

became the thing I think about

all day.

Audible sighs...

the kind that escape before I notice,

the kind people hear across a room

and don't ask about,

because what would I even say.

In...

out...

each one a small negotiation

with something that doesn't move,

doesn't lighten,

doesn't care

that lungs need room to work.

It's not the room that's empty.

It's not even the air.

It's the weight of missing you

pressed flat against my chest,

turning something as simple as breathing

into proof

of how much this costs me

just to keep going.

I'm still here.

Still breathing.

Even with the weight.

Especially with the weight.