The sixth day
after you returned home
from white walls
and drug
induced sleeps,
you sit
on your lavender
duvet and
stare
at the corner
where gray
paint meets bare
black chalkboard
in your bedroom.
You breathe breaths
Sounding like music
keeping time
with your racing
heartbeat
that you sense
in your pale
parched lips
and see
in your trembling
ankles through
empty eyes.
Heavy head
tilted to the right
shoulders shlumped
with elbows resting
on numb legs.
Nimble fingers
drag chalk
in curves
and you add pressure
to your legs
to make sure
they don't fall
with the chalk
dust that you
cough up
and puff off
the flat side
of your right hand
onto the black
wall clutched
by your left’s
knuckles so you
don't buckle
under your body's
weightlessness
because your heart
is flying
on the carbon
released
from your lungs on
exhale.
Inhale.
