noun difficult or labored breathing

i am telling this girl about my condition. i don't know why i choose her but i guess it's because she insists i call her sister and rubs little circles on my back to soothe me while i try to fall asleep. i don't have a label for it, not really anyway, i hardly think it fits the bill – mine is a different kind anxiety.

one that boils right under the surface, replaces the blood with lava, circulates through 100,000 kilometers within my small body, and leaves me without an embrace when it has the capacity to wrap itself around the earth two times and a half.

the vapor licks the inside of my skin, and the largest organ in my body displays its own beauty with bitten nails, worn down cuticles, and white fading marks where i scratch myself
 

layers upon layers of protection, but what can protect me from the spies and traitors within my own body? 

 

i can see the dead cells fall to the ground, every white mark, blooming at the tip of a blunt nail–

 

i wish it was that easy to get rid of all things dead and unusable, and that no matter how brute we were, they still ended up catching sunlight through angled blinds and dancing with the millions of other dust particles in a room

 

i wish we all had elegant ends and photograph-worthy last minutes, maybe a lingering smile in the face of oblivion or the ecstasy of being surrounded by fellow revolutionaries

no, mine is a different kind of anxiety, it's the depression in the head of a devout believer who is obviously neither devout nor believer enough because why else would i suffer? have i tried reading the holy text? have i tried praying more? have i renewed my intentions?

no, mine is a different kind of anxiety, i can't count all the symptoms but this girl tells me that i have shortness of breath, that my ribcage feeling like it is constricting and poking into my lungs is no poetic heartache or longing – it's shortness of breath, and isn't that one son of a bitch

because mine is a different kind of anxiety, all my breaths are small gulps, and no matter how much i force them i can never fill my lungs enough to satisfy the need to breathe, but there are spurts of relaxed sighs

every
once
in
a
while

and sometimes i gasp, and gasp, and gasp and use all my energy to fill millions of capillaries with oxygen

to ensure that at least some clean air passes on to my blood –

because mine is a different kind of anxiety, one that is so dense and massive, it collapses in on itself and creates a black hole right where my heart is, between the lungs, and at the center of my circulatory system

one that gravitates everything surrounding it towards itself and swallows emotions whole,

one that is deafening, and shattering, and can't hold any meaning because shortness of breath is one son of a bitch, and what could i ever do?