By Terry Trowbridge
Copyright ©2024
Rise upon this groaning life of doubt?
-Emile Nelligan (2017). Ship of Gold, 56.
The orgasmic breath.
Exhale of aloneness. Aloof,
thanks to the self-assurance
of privacy in solitude.
A different kind of blood waning
Than, (whatever the antonym of erection is),
slow-ebbing pulses unhinged from the heart
when two bodies rush to a stop.
Why am I attracted to doubt?
When I am alone, twisting myself
around wanting, and I don’t have.
When I accompany another earthling,
what is that moment of triumph,
but the relief that the impossible connection
came true? But I breathe alone.
The breaths of it are hardly seamless.
Heartbeats take too long to slow
without another heart to compare.
Seamy, I breathe the dark air.
Alone, unlit self: somewhere is a mirror
but no reflection. Only introspection.
Unluckily, introspection.
Sometimes, the flow-state of marathons,
then sleep.
Alone, I solicit waking apnea. I transcend breath.
Arise, throw convections into outer space.
Squeeze the ribs around the flexed limbs.
Sometimes, a sound, unintended.
The return to breathing by rote
becomes loud, by way of that chance sound.
Lonesome unmeaning.
About Terry Trowbridge:
Terry Trowbridge is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many writers during the polycrisis.
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