Image by the Author of the Aurora Borealis

I cannot hold this

heaviness, I feel tethered

fettered

and then it dawned on me:

I wasn’t breathing

such irony teaching others to breathe when I cannot breathe myself

“you teach what you need to learn.”

or so I was told

and so

I am still learning

learning to breathe as my mother struggles to breathe

as a child, there was a time I was so sad I wished I was in a coma

I had no earthly idea what a coma truly entailed

just that I’d be asleep, and people would visit me

somehow, that seemed like the ideal

I think I read too many fairy tales

“to sleep, perchance to dream.”

now at middle age,

I struggle to fall asleep

I can still dream when I do sleep

O, how I love to dream

but to sleep

unaided

now, that would be a dream

but still, something heavy feels like it’s pressing upon me

it’s keeping me from falling asleep

I think I know what it is it

but to utter it out loud

to let it go

to untie

this bow

I just

don’t

know