Breath Is Labor
Breathing as a Practice Of Courage
I remember being as a sphere of potential,
trapped in the seemingly
impenetrable casing
of my protection and my strength.
I was a spec of light in a shell,
buried one hundred feet below the topsoil.
… the wrestling by rote, I recall:
the constant banging of my flimsy flesh
against the unforgiving cocoon
until cracks, fragile enough
to birth my purple fingers formed…
wanting to die a quiet death
wedged between
my broken home
and the pressurized feces that carried it;
the weight of being gestated;
and the ways in which life
seemed to stretch my capacity for oppression
and challenge my endurance of lameness.
Well, I’m twenty feet above the soil,
still nursing survival
amidst the winds that bluster to uproot me,
the rot that eats to warp me,
and the snows that blanket to freeze me over,
… still trying to breath.
© Laquanique Louise Lake, 2023. All rights reserved.
Afrikan, Indigenous, Black, American Writer
