breathe

You are born. The doctor gives you a smack on the ass and you announce your entrance to this world with a loud startled cry. From that moment on you breathe in and you breathe out.

You leave the hospital cradled in your mother's arms, unknowing, unbiased, and unshaped and you breathe in and you breathe out.

You grow up, you take your first steps, you steal you first kiss, you tell your first lie, and each day you breathe in and you breathe out.

The first time your head is submerged under water you have a glimpse at the gift you have been given, but in the moment your head breaks the surface it slips away in thoughts of tomorrow and you breathe in and you breathe out.

You fall in lust, pass in and out of love, become lost to anger and relinquish hope, only to forget it all your next time through and still you breathe in and you breathe out.

You watch days turn from autumn orange to winter white as you discover mortality and learn to celebrate life and you breathe in and you breathe out.

Then you meet him. 

And the first time you feel those hands settle over your throat, gentle and firm, you are captured by a grip complete enough that you feel the gift pass from your lips and into his own, until everything in you is tight and constricted, and for a moment you are more in this place then you have ever been anywhere, ever before And you don't breathe in. You don't breathe out.

Until he lets you.