Breath, I have come to know you differently now. Once invisible current, then potential threat, now testament to our fragile coexistence.
I learned to read rooms not by light but by ventilation, watched dust motes suspended in sunbeams, each particle illuminated, each shadow a question.
My hands would tremble at the percussion
of strangers’ coughs reverberating through
subway cars, through grocery aisles,
as the city’s pulse faltered, then fell silent.
In nursing homes, the elderly pressed
weathered fingertips to cold windowpanes,
their breath clouding glass, the ache of almost touching long after screens went dark.
In hospitals with sealed doorways, nurses knelt beside beds, their gloved hands holding
phones to dying ears.
What becomes of the threshold
when door frames hold two worlds apart?
Night brought sirens carving crimson trails
through darkness, while dawn revealed nature reclaiming abandoned streets. The air clearer, breath more precious.
Days folded into one another like origami birds. Tuesdays nested inside Thursdays,
months compressed to moments.
Hair grew past shoulders, past birthdays.
The neighbor’s violin wept through open windows. Across the courtyard, strangers abandoned dishes in sinks to listen. A communion of separate solitudes.
We bumped elbows with mail carriers, cashiers, our bodies learning new languages of greeting. We mouthed I love you through masks and windows, straining to read lips through fog and fabric.
We found connection in unexpected places:
in pets absorbing a year’s worth of redirected
embraces, in the silent language of eyes
above masks, in the rhythm of chests
rising and falling on screens, breathing
together, apart.
Now as we emerge, we carry what cannot be forgotten: That no distance truly separates what longs
to connect, that thresholds exist to be crossed,
that touch transcends skin.
Even in isolation, we shared you, Breath— part of one vast, resilient body.
Each mask a testament to our interdependence, each six feet of space an act of love.
