I know her secret. It passes through me. I feel the regrets flavored lightly with remorse. The sweet, forbidden kiss he gave her still lingers in her breath and for now, I share it. Her name was Maude. I will remember that for but a moment and then the next will overtake me.
      A deep inhalation— it smells of dust, heat and sweat. My chest feels about ready to burst. He thinks of how good a cold beer would be, how it's two hours to quitting time and how big the ta-tas were on the redhead that just sauntered by. My chest expands as he exhales. Charlie is a big man who works with steel up high and his ancestry is Mohawk. He thinks about green forests, and what it must have been like when his people owned half of New York.. He stays with me longer than the other, and then is gone.
      The procession is never ending, wherever the air goes—I go:
      Chloe is dying and she is only twelve. Her breath brings me fast panting, tastes of fear and medicine. She bites the inside of her mouth and I share lukewarm tang of her blood. She doesn't want to die.
      Bertie is eighty and wants to die. His breath is slow and even. Everyone he loves has died, and his children circle like vultures wanting his money. He sits in the rocker on the front porch of a boarding house, watching leaves fall from a tree. I feel his wonder at the red and golden leaves drifting to the ground. He wishes he could be that unmindful—just let go, and have something left of the beauty and dignity he once had.

 

      I want to hold these people that come through me, keep them here, hoard the memories that they give me—but I can't.         The Maiden's curse binds me here for eternity, and it was her own undoing as well as mine. I am allowed to remember, when the west wind blows into the temple. For now, I know who and what I am, but that goes, blows away and will come again. This is not lonely, it is what we are. This is what exists. There is no fighting, only acceptance.
        Zephyrus fills my lungs, and he is in me like the lover he once was. His breath ruffles my hair, strokes the insides of my lungs, becomes one with my blood and being. I try not to exhale, to hold him at my center and not let go. Yet in the end, I must. Air, wind, breath, they must all move to live.
        So Zephyrus goes from me. Then his brothers come, one after the other carrying with them the secrets, memories and affairs of the world. They are not sweet like he. Impersonal and efficient, they are merely porters bringing information. I do not let Boreas, Notus or Euros linger. I push them out the doors of my mouth, away through the portals of my nose. Yet sometimes I savor what they carry. These messengers have no consciousness of what they hold.
        If you could see me, you would not be offended. As an immortal, I am as lovely as the day I was cursed. I was barely a girl of twenty Summers then. I will not say Springs because that invites mention of The Maid. I would appear as a statue to you. The layers of dust that lie upon me would perhaps even conceal the rise and fall of my chest. I closed my eyes long ago for there is nothing to see—but the dark.

        Enrique is young. His mouth tastes hot. Everything about him is aflame. He spits words at his lover, and enjoys the power it gives him. His tongue wags in his mouth. When Enrique is pleased he drags it along the back of his teeth and pretends to sharpen his canines..
        Ava wants a child. She is taking drugs to get pregnant. The pills are huge, and she can barely swallow them. Yet, she chokes them down. The longing I taste on her tongue is deep and wide. It could swallow her if she lets it, devour her whole and digest her.
        Yoon-Hee eats kimchee, a sour, spicy cabbage concoction. It smells awful to me, but she savors it. She wants to go home to Seoul, but her husband is an engineering student at MIT, with two years left to go. She feels trapped by her marriage, and wishes she had not married to get away from her mother. She looks out her windows. Men in small boats are rowing on hte Charles River. From Yoon-Hee's height, they look like water bugs skating across the surface of a pond.

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Like Breath
© 2004 Pam Marin-Kingsley

Illustrations © 2004 Pam Marin-Kingsley