The credo my life proclaimed was,
"Put out the fire with bare hands."
And in the course of the struggle,
a hand crackled, while the other extended
to hold the sling of my fanny pack.
Unlike yours, mine doesn't wrap around my little waist;
I hang one around my face, sealing my nostrils as a swab to suck up and
arrest the red of my nosebleed.
But the endless dripping is blind to the roadblock;
It plays a plop even to a deaf hobo.
As desperate times call for desperate measures,
I've been made not to breathe life,
to not breathe at all.

I hit my cry button as a pearl-white
gauze scrubs the inner walls of my nasal cavity;
It slides inside, filling the hollow of my nostrils.
I had to have my throat drilled to form a hollow,
to have my tracheal tube placed, to have a substitute for my breathing role.
Living with sickness can be sickening.
Fleeing fantasies, for me, have always
been getting out of here and having everyone
watch me bring the fire and see the night alight,
to see the starlit sky breaking this confinement.
These fantasies are wee enough to
fit in the pit of my imaginary Hello Kitty bag.
Too much to dream of, too much to wish for—is it?
It all quivers the rain bubble I hold in my eyes.

I'm trying so hard not to burst it yet.
At times, it feels like some of us were born to harbour endless suffering,
that our delegated vault has no room for dreams and wishes, that it'd all be in vain.
Life's ocean-blue hunk we thought was blue
is grey smithereens in real life,
but those smithereens still carry the essence of life, and I've come a long way.
Just inhaling the essence to the very end of its layer is all I've left to do.

.    .    .