Breathe Until I Find My Lungs

On the day I swallowed my heart whole

tucking it safely into soft stomach fat,

I buried my nose in the pink crook of my wrist

drunkenly breathing in the musky 

vanilla cedar of that blue perfume…

You’ll come to me with a toothy smirk 

sinking boney fingertips into ribs

ripping laughter deep from my chest

You will dig 

my grip will tighten 

your forearm muscle will jut

until the air squeezes from my lungs

and against my shaking neck

your lips press a flat, chapped kiss…

I exhaled that old craving for

hazel eyes and bad puns but,

like a snuffed-out candle

your smoke still lingers

and no matter how hard I wave

it won’t dissipate.

In cold water, my hands submerged

tenderly rubbing soap between my creases

until fresh unloved skin appeared.

That blue perfume was gingerly tossed out

and plucked from my cabinet’s shelf

a clear Parisian bottle with a square label, 

the gift to myself for the woman of my future,

a lush bouquet of marigolds, bergamot,

violets, buchu, and cyclamen

those most precious things to coax my heart

for something worth more than any man.

Annalise is a hybrid writer who received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago. She is the Marketing Manager for Unwoven Literary & Arts Magazine, the Brand Strategist for Juxtapose Podcast, and a Poetry Reader for Frontier Poetry. Her work can be found in Allium, a Journal of Poetry and Prose, and Marsh Hawk Press.