i am a lucky girl.

 

just recently i read that

on average

people take around 24,000 breaths 

everyday 

in between words

and laughs 

and running late to their jobs.

today i watched an old

PJ Harvey concert on tv

she was singing and

screaming and

breathing 

all over the place-

it was great

i bet i took a thousand breaths 

just sitting there watching 

without even realizing it

that's very lucky!

you know,

you think you can imagine

what it's like-

not to breathe, i mean

but you can't really 

it's the same as contemplating

the beginning of time 

or the boundaries of space

you think you can 

but really, you can't 

and you don't 

not until you have to

not until one day,

the phone rings and you

hear the words you

hoped you wouldn't 

and suddenly,

everything in and around you

stops

it stops 

and it doesnt

it stops and 

moves faster 

the walls of the world crumble

into nothing 

and time is frozen and in

fast forward, somehow simultaneously 

like standing still in a real-time 

long exposure shot of a 

five o'clock freeway

and somewhere buried beneath the words

and numbers

the seemingly millions of 

words 

and

numbers

that you never seem to hear after that

on the frozen-fast-forward freeway

is you-

left to imagine the thing 

you cannot

while death manifests in your body 

like a poisonous vine

reaching its tendrils up

and around your throat

closing in

and while you cannot understand 

you begin to feel the pressure

and possibility 

of time

of future

of life

slipping away 

and it feels like

 

falling

 

like falling straight out of 

the sky and right through the earth

and there is nothing underneath 

nothing

to grab onto

just a heavy 

and sometimes weightless

freefalling existence 

 

in those days, those months,

i did not remember to breathe

but today, i did.

 

today i drank coffee 

and played with my dog

i watched a PJ Harvey concert

and for the first time

put a little of it into words 

all the while breathing

in

and out

in and out

roughly 24,000 times

and anyways, 

mostly everyday now

i think of that and 

what a lucky girl

i really am.