Stormy Thoughts

Sometimes I listen to the silence,
trying not to think, not to breathe,
not to exist.

Breathing is the hardest
to stop. Thinking fades
the slower I breathe,
and my existence
sometimes
seems to fade away with
my thoughts, but
breathing just continues
like an ache in my foot
that won’t stop
no matter how much I rub,
a constant reminder
that I do exist. I have to.

I can hold my breath, but
that impulse
to take another breath
can’t be denied for long.
If I take a deep breath,
in and out,
my body relaxes,
and its natural impulses don’t work
so well. I can almost forget to breathe
as long as I think about something.

It’s a vicious cycle, this forgetting.
When your body rejects your
every wish because of its innate need
for survival. But what is survival
if life means nothing to you
but a continuous string
of curse words, deadlines, and stood up dates?
And underlying it all is this
regret.
This and every moment defined
by a cold, stormy night on the road
when everything seemed right
and the next moment,
everything was wrong.

Are two lives and three futures
dependent on something so small
as a moment?