How to breathe
by Patrick T. Reardon

Accept air in.
Process it. Expel it.

Accept bliss and ache,
random acts of existence.

Accept other voices
or don’t listen.

Accept the flower and dog shit
or close your eyes.

Accept a journey
that starts and ends.

Accept the gamble
of waking up.

Accept limits.
Accept freedom.
Accept gravity.
Accept fragility.
Accept the cloud of unknowing.

Accept unscheduled beauty.

Accept your own sins.

Accept confused alarms,
bad intent,
the chafing of coupling.

Accept the communion of saints,
the quick and the dead,
the mob, the family, the dance.

Accept another’s fingerprint.
Accept the risk of reaching.

Accept alone.

Accept the blinding white beyond.

PAINTING:Breath by Kexin Di (2018).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Breathing, it seems to me, is a synonym for living. So what does that entail? That’s what I sought to express in the poem. When I was done, I…