I’m walking, and there’s a gap.

    I step into it.  I always step into it.  I know how this goes.  I know it too well.  I’ve done it time and time again.  I know what this cigarette signifies and I know as the smoke diffuses I disintegrate.  I cease.  I falter and fail.  Fall.  Fall far and hard and shatter into what will soon be swept from the ground.  Swept away.  Forgotten.  The usual.

    But when I should fall, when I always fall, when the time comes to take my plummet, to exhale the breath that stung so deep to pull in, I don’t.  I simply don’t.  And I can’t process this.  I can’t discern how it’s possible.  How I’m able to carry on.  To keep living and growing and feeling and loving.  

    I’m suspended.  Delayed.  Stretched and splayed.  

    I am more.  I feel so much more.

    And her fingers find my collar bone.  They drift ‘round my neck and down my bare spine.  Down the life I was so prepared to let go.  To part from.

    Then there’s another breath.  An expansion.  A suction of air.  Then another.  And they don’t sting so bad this time.  They progressively soothe and ease me.  They fill me with hope.

    And she pulls me to her.  She presses my chin to her cheek and her leg drapes over mine.  She kisses my forehead.  Like she did that one night.

    That one night.

    And we lay.  We lay and live and breathe.

    We breathe so many breaths.