Breathe

My stomach is digesting my heart,

But I am walking from a height I have never been.

Every few minutes, a valve that holds back poison

Bursts

Flooding my veins

With a name who’s rhyme fits this end.

Once I am able to crawl back to my knees,

I am smiling at patients, and discussing their day,

It’s a new world where clarity

Is pain,

Where a thought about groceries

Can be knocked to the side

With a sudden flash of a memory

Of that day.

I’ll sink into the floor below me

Until I’m lower than the mat where I stood,

But the next thing I know,

I am standing,

And I’m breathing,

And I don’t know how I got there,

All that I know is that the time between

Those two things

Is increasing by the second,

And one day, I’ll be standing

And breathing,

And I won’t know any different.