Photo by Malicki M Beser on Unsplash

I’m Suffocating

I can’t breathe one more breath

My lungs are full
but not of the air I so direly crave.
Emptied beyond recognition,
I can no longer release the toxins consuming my inhales.
The inhales that lead me nowhere,
no matter how harshly I try to just breathe.

I try to just breathe.

Panic envelopes me like
a [harsh scream],
surfacing the airs after the silent darkness
from nightmares that never end but only still.
Nightmares that eventually mesh into reality,
manifesting themselves into demons and monsters and heart aches and lonesome.

My memory floods itself with horror —
horror that isn’t even my own.
Have I gone too far?

Or perhaps not far enough?

…You tell me I’ll be fine,
and man, I know that.

But I’m not fine right now,
and man, you know that…

Here we go again,
moving through life like water full of energy,
but water that is also stagnant
and not moving like a…