x-ray vision

Today I saw a picture of my heart for the first time.

I didn't recognize it.

For all the poems, for all the blogs, the journal entries, the letters...I thought for sure it would look familiar to me. But it didn't look familiar. It looked like a foreign language. A foreign country. My mother's cursive.

Tonight I coughed so hard that I understood math for a second. Tonight I coughed so hard I saw stars. Tonight I coughed so hard that I stopped breathing. There's no poetry there, I just wanted to illustrate how hard I was coughing.

Ever since I was 17, my writing has been angst. My words have been longing. My journals have been wish lists. I wrote about trying to get the girl. I wrote about trying to escape the job. I wrote about trying to find my way. I wrote about what it means to be alive.

But this week, I couldn't breathe.

And poetry may help me breathe metaphorically, but I got at least three prescriptions from doctors and poetry wasn't one of them.

Azithromycin? Yes. Amoxicillin? Yes. Hydrocodone? Yes.
Metaphors? No. Truth? No. Beauty? No. 

I've spent seven years watching some young people struggle to find air. I wrote poems about saving them, then I locked my door during lunch. I took attendance and replied to e-mails and sat through meetings. But only this week did I understand what they were really going through.

There's no assignment I can give that will fix your lungs. There's no lesson plan that will remove the weight on your chest. You need azithromycin, You need need amoxicillin.

I have an inhaler you can borrow, but it's running out of inhalations.

I watched more Netflix than I read and wrote combined. I was too tired to create. I felt like my father. I felt like my father. Damn it, people, I felt like my father. 

This is me trying to breathe again. Please join me.