How to Breathe

Your name has taken

root behind my sternum,

blooms soft when I breathe,

warm as a tended thing-

I have made a home of you

without meaning to,

and woke one day full,

no longer hollowing.

You have grown into

the architecture of me,

the way ivy finds the cracks

and settles in.

I find you living

in my oldest, quietest places,

gentle and permanent,

as I always hoped something might.

This is not a choice I could

unmake now -

you are woven through

the fabric of my years.

Press your ear to my ribs:

you'd hear yourself echo back,

every chamber shaped

from being yours.

You have become a lung -

one I didn’t know I lacked

until the breathing grew so easy

and I understood:

I had been breathing wrong

all along.