The Language of Lungs

It is gruesome and tough and it sputters on the treacherous designs my young mind swallowed down in dangerous quantities, at only six attempting to comprehend dying.

Pacing back and forth in my bedroom, my lungs filling up with the swelling desire to elaborate my funeral, at only seven.

Perhaps I was never a child.

Children do not eavesdrop on their parents, their asthma flaring and pulsing, making them cough on the hate their family radiated behind closed doors.

I was deaf to the term anxiety, watering down my crushing paranoia as average and common.

I starred at my sister, pleading with her to ignore them, just as we always had.

“It is not our fight,” my breathlessness dragged on each moment, “leave this be.”

The Language of Lungs

Is bleak and drastic, it beckons change yet commands tradition.

The tradition of choking back all the sounds you desired to release, letting your chest swell with these hidden fragments of childhood.

How could a child dwell on suffering, lying awake at night while they wait for the sound of a broken door, or another mirror that will vanish in the morning.

My lungs are pathetic and they are thin and still filled with the mucus of my accumulated worries that I packed away at an early age.

The Language of Lungs

Is learning how to say what I want to again, learning how to never hide my breath again.

My words ramble on now, stumbling out of my asthma like a messy spoonful of cough drops and honey.

I knew I wasn’t a child anymore when I spoke against my fears, and dealt with the consequences regarding that on my own.

A child remains silent, they have not learned a language they could spare, their lungs are large and inflamed, they cough on the words they wished to say.

An adult will talk loudly, voicing the words that once restricted their airways, allowing them to be seen no matter the consequences.

Perhaps…

Perhaps I am still a child, then.