and i still feel sick

even now

i have to count to survive it

i count my breaths. i try to remember sleep cuddle exhales instead of my paralyzed horror inhales.

in. out. one. in. out. two. in.

i count the seconds it takes my lungs to fill, remembering my 7th grade chorus instructor screeching out "diaphragmatic breaths or perish!"

i think about filling out my chest with breath, with life, with oxygen, with change as the carbon dioxide is forcibly removed, evicted. carbon dioxide, my biology teacher called invisible death. the trickster. 

i look around for a plant so i can think about breath cycles and life cycles and the beauty of science. 

hold on to that. one. two. thr...

but it starts to slip

and i fall into the bad place. 

the place where i can feel the sterility of the walls, of the tools, of the carefully rehearsed facial contortions of the doctor.

where i can feel the gaping hole in me. 

where life is supposed to breathe from. where it takes its first breath. from me. out of me.

i try to hold ont that. 

infinity. 

infinite breaths from infinitely wide and deep thrusting hips.

but then i think of its opposite

because you can't have the beautifully constructive infinite

without the devastatingly beautiful destructive void: zero. nothing. 

with every counted breath

zero takes a deeper one

blows out

and destroys the tower of cards i've built

falling in beautiful paper cuts as the tower collapses.