My doctor says when everything feels suffocating

the issue is in my throat‒

“Too many words compressed in the trachea”.

 

He said it happens to those with cinder-block burdens

crushing their chest cavities,

to those who must learn to articulate silence’s speech

because the native tongue is

different from the language of heart beats and anxious

blood flow, which may be why  

my prayers feel choking. 

 

Now, I try and I try, to say what I am, but

pushing stillborn sentences

takes the iron from my blood; and, sometimes the

moving words won’t come for days.

 

But he kept imploring, saying “If you really

wish to breathe you must learn to

wait nearly strangled by the trekking of life through

your windpipe. You must learn to

sit still with those ants crawling on your nerves. You must

wait for yourself to open,

and stay.”

 

He must not have known how corpse-like I had become

‒ a carved out log‒ floating

through the frustration of trying to fill the gaping

cavity, gathering

everything I’ve ever loved and still unable

to occupy the space

between my chest and my burdens.

 

But, he knew corpse’s hearts could not be cultivated

for seeds; I was no corpse.                                                                                      

Maybe the seeds would suck up my deficient blood,

make me the dingy ground they

grow in cleansed by their struggle,    

These words,

 Eroding holes in me to

make space.These words, alive and

aware of their power,

For these words, help me not draw back when it hurts,

Remembering the dead

can’t share their silent memoirs:

the feeling of the gauging out of eyes, the

cutting off of hands, the heart

turned clay in the hands of the son of man, the

coordinates of hurried feet

and feather weight worries

until finally trusting the chaos to take

me where I need. A voice box

inflamed.

These words, filling up my breathing space.

 

“So what should I do?” I asked.

“Nothing.”, he said,” You should be, and with those words. Pray

silently with your eyes open,

watch for who hears… then speak”

“I know nothing of prayer”, I replied.

“Well,” he said “pray and be thankful for what you do know.” 

But all I know is the squeezing,

strangling, crushing of us like oranges to make poems. 

And this is why I must write. ©Cjeffrey,2013