In indexing parlance, we call this an organizational principle.
A concept for future, sustained, systematic retrieval and it exists as this:
Have you ever stopped to listen to the sound of your own breath?
The air, clicking the edge of your lungs, a slight wheeze, slowly disappearing as the months creep onward from your last cigarette, your last embrace of immortality, your acknowledgement of age, of time, of..of..of…
So, here I am and she is gone.
She, so many years, so many laughs, so many,
Disappeared, like the wheeze, like the habit, like the thought of eternity.
Have you ever allowed that breath to float through your memory, to retrieve a tattered memory, an impulse, the sound of a step on a faraway pavement, the thought of a hurt offered, of a hurt taken, of a hurt?
I have.
Have you ever thought about the past and wept, like an animal weeps for its master, like the ocean weeps for that above?
The light dims tonight, the skies are not clear. The yellow dust from China settles across the windowsill, staining and edifying, invading lungs and forcing a wheeze, a click, an asthmatic sensation not unlike a spasm of regret.
Have you ever celebrated a failure?
To realize that from this well of error I have walked from four legs to two to one to none.
To exit this ooze, this wellspring, this boggy mass of future fuel.
To realize that regret shapes me like no other imprint, that hope drives and drives and that mistake navigates and that together, life is possible and problematic and wonderful…and wonderful…
And soon I will marry.
And soon I wall embark from this foreign land.
And soon…some things will be clearer than they are now.
And soon I will draw another breath….and another….and another.