Breath

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We all breathe. I can breathe. Everyone here can breathe. Even when it is too cold to move our fingers or too hot to move our muscles, we either breathe or we die. We begin and we breathe, and when we end we stop breathing. When we end we feel breath against our skin and we disappear. I am millions of breaths old. The wisest elders count their breaths in billions, like the piling of sticks so high they could build a bridge to the heavens and have enough left over to make a fire.

I breathe. I breathe quickly. He breathes quickly. I can feel his breath. I can almost feel his breath. His breath is warm. He is warm. He is alien, from another world, but his breaths are so like mine. My fellow breathing-beings, my fellow vessels of breath, my friends and allies, they told me I should not move or exert myself or breathe any more than I needed to, that I was tired and weak and warm and seeing things that were not there, warmer than warm, as warm as his breath, his breath, breath that I respect more than anything. I walk forward, and breathe. I want to see where breath begins.

What are we but an orange stain on the floor, left to our own delusions? What are we but skin jars made to hold breath? What are we but a vessel to wax poetic? What are we but fools? Who are we to say anything? Who is to say that the mad are not sane, and the sane are not mad? Who is to say that he who hunts in fire cannot hunt in rain? Who names us breathing beings? Who labels us? Who sees the world through clear eyes? Who but the breath knows the world? The breath knows enough to live. Without the breath, we cannot live. Without the breath, we could not have begun. Without the breath, we will die. We will all die, but breath will live on.

I can feel orange heat, even though white flame is hotter. I can feel seven long strands of grass brushing against my face. I can feel light and darkness. I can feel breath. I can feel breath blowing across the sky. I can see all the creatures in the world dancing around the hot cavern. I can see them breathing. I can see them clearer than I have ever seen anything before.

His breath is warm. I can feel heat. The heat is so real to me I can touch it, and it feels solid. I see the hard lines in his face and the roughness. He's red. I can feel the breath. The whole room is burning. The whole room is alive. We breathe because we are alive. We breathe because we want to be alive. He breathes because he wants to be alive, too. His breath is warm. I feel warm too. I want to breathe. I want to live. I want to die. I want to breathe.

We are naught but peasants. That's what people say. We are insignificant, either idiotic or insane. Our breath means nothing. The fog is only the stagnant, gasping breaths of giants, falling from their cloud thrones to earth. Because we are alive we breathe, and when we die, we stop breathing, and nothing matters anymore. We are nothing to breath; breath is everything to us. We are all servants to something. Breath is a dancing fairy.

I can hear him breathe. I can hear him angry. His skin is so rough. I don't know why we breathe. Is breathing mad? Who is to say the one who breathes is mad? Or is the one who cannot breathe mad? Maybe those who ask are mad. Maybe we who think are mad.

What are the trees? The trees are dancers breathing in the city streets, dancing to the sound of wind. There is nothing I would like more. We are nothing. We are empty jars breathing, storing breaths and giving them back. The sky is the stars breathing. The water is the sky breathing through thick tears. The world is breathing. The world is breath. We are breathing. We are breath. We are one. We are three. We are nine. We are twenty-seven. We are the sun, the distant moons, and the earth below us. We are the triumvirate of thinking creatures, gentle giants, and the uniting force of breath. The astronomers in the cities view the heavens above through their breathing-glasses, through long scopes wove of golden breaths. They are alive to see us, because they breathe. We are everything we could ever be and everything we could never be. We are breathing. Why? Because we must.

He is breathing. His breath is gray and smoky and orange and sometimes red, and almost blue. His breath is sometimes white, and nothing like trees, but everything like trees, growing outward into my heart and onto my face. I can see us. Everyone on earth. We are all there inside his breath, inside the orange, living there, waiting to breathe. We were all poets and from his jaws were born the words we used to explain who we are. We were born nestled in-between his serrated teeth and settled on his burning tongue, in a place ringed by jagged edges with nurturing heat within, a place so like the human heart it is impossible that we could have been born from anything else. The giant sleeps in his stone palace, breathing, beside his gate, near another world, his world. He is a servant to no one, he is kin to no man. The breaths he takes in, the breaths he gives back, these are the only things he has in common with our world, my world.

I wanted to run forward, so I did. I'm still breathing. I'm standing far enough away, but I can still feel the beginnings of his breath against my body, the feeling of burning warmth against my already hot face. The ground is hard and doesn't give way beneath my feet. I see him raise his giant head and roar. I heard everyone behind me, all the vessels of breath behind me, my fellow breathing-beings, my friends and allies, screaming at me to stop, to stand still, it's too dangerous, so stay away from the great red breath, but I didn't listen to them. I can see him burning, his head aflame. It doesn't matter who he is or what he is or where he came from. He is the greatest and most legendary of all breathing beings. He is respected as much as he is feared, he is forgotten as often as he is understood. Like breath. We all return to him, the beginning and the end of all life. This is the end of my journey on a remote island of breath, breath I can see against my hands and feel against my body. The breath. I am safe with him. I am safe. He is breathing. His breath is the hottest thing I have ever felt in life, in life, or in life. I feel my heart melting. I feel safe. I run to him.