Just Breathe

I struggled to come out but I did.

She had to push hard but she did.

They wanted me to cry but I didn’t.

She wanted to hold back but she didn’t.

I tried to breathe out but I didn’t.

She wanted me to live but I didn’t.

My life was on her till I was in her.

It sucks that she had worked hard to push me out.

And then, when it was upon me--

I didn’t.

Consciousness

Night and day, I just heard the clock tick. So much so that it was embedded in my brain. It was a feature I possessed, an extra limb that I needed to perform my daily functions. I heard it as I slept-- my breathing patterned itself to each second in Pavlovian hypnotism. Till that one day when it was so indelible in my head that it became a drone and I thought I would go crazy. Instead of ticking according to time, it started ticking according to my moods. If I was sad, it slowed down, if I was frustrated, it fastened to a pace of continuous buzz, like a fly was stuck in my ear. It was driving me mad. I cut my ears. But it continued to tick. I decided to condition myself to another sensation. I decided to keep rubbing my fingers together so that I get addicted to a tactile awareness. But instead, my ticks adapted to the rubbing, and every time I touched my fingers together, the ticks would get excited, like a dog wagging its tail on being petted. I decided to commit my sense of smell, but then, every time I inhaled I could hear the air click against the inside of my lungs. And then I started seeing the ticks in every strand of hair that fell from my head to my forehead. I started seeing it when my glance moved across the room—it decided to have a rhythm. I could not see a whole image in continuum, because my eyes now moved in incoherent inches. And so one day I decided, I really have gone mad. But in this apparent madness, my senses united at every tick to remind me that I existed.