learning to breathe

I’m learning to breathe again
but it’s painful.

when I breathe I feel
the pressure of my sorrow
the weight of 10,000 uncried tears.

when I breathe I feel
the power of my shame
a jagged chunk of black ice lodged
deep in my throat.

when I breathe I feel
the animal life
animal fear + animal sadness
animal panic + animal loss.

when I breathe I feel
the screws in my chest beginning to loosen
+ the life I’ve known for so long
coming to an end.

(PDF version)

Creative Commons License
The learning to breathe by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
February 6th, 2009 in poems | tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments

  • 1. Male Survivor Workshop &#&hellip  |  July 20th, 2011 at 10:06 pm

    [...] two poems in that book which sung to me. One was “body memory” and the other was “learning to breathe“. I devoured these two poems over and over as I lay in [...]

  • 2. 1SixthColumbus&hellip  |  October 21st, 2011 at 8:11 am

    Thank you for sharing this Rick. I needed to read this today.

  • 3. Rick&hellip  |  December 31st, 2011 at 10:58 am

    Thanks for your comment. I really appreciate knowing this post was helpful to you.