Breathe

Let’s play a game. When you’re not just breaking down, but melting into the sheets of your bed, pull those blankets over and make a fort over your head. 

Take a breath in. Now as you breathe out, free your imagination from the shackles of ethics you’ve sworn to. 

No laws apply to the thoughts you seed, it’s the only freedom you’ll even know. Let the little lilies of love blossom and blow away the dandelions of dread. 

Let the young blood pumping through your veins navigate the way for mind. Let the pain bleed out its venom. Its the only way you will breathe anew. 

I remember the night when I was miles away from home and the scorpion bit me. The next morning when I woke up with my arm swollen, alone, with the rain pouring on my window, I cried. I howled. Then I picked myself up and I got the venom out. 

The pain wasn’t as bad as the feeling of being alone. I missed my mother, I needed my mother, God where was my mother! But how did I forget that the souls of my ancestors were ghosts inside of me. I wasn’t separate from the voice of my mother etched inside my brain. I was a warrior, trained by the teachings of my parents, and everyone else who showed me love. I breathed because I was worthy of it. 

So now when I’m back inside the sheets of my own bed, comforted by the warmth of the known, why does the same feeling of the night visit me back from miles away? 

I tell myself to be brave, to bleed the venom out. To surrender to faith. To trust the maps my conscience was handed and look out for the treasures on the way. To believe in my worth, for those who believed in it when I didn’t.