Breathe

Micro(non)fiction about air

I wrote this for the Lemon Jelly Press open call (and cried so much doing it!)

Prompt ‘air’, max. 250 words.

I remember how you used to tickle me and I'd be helpless with laughter, unable to drag a breath.

My breath was always short when I was with you, from scrambling up mountainsides, pedalling along muddy tracks—you in front, me behind.

I'd have followed you anywhere. You were my whole world in those chilly winter half-term holidays, those blackberry-flavoured summer afternoons. On the way home, the wind would rush through the open sunroof as you floored the pedal to see just how fast that old Triumph could go. Faster, faster to the soundtrack of Queen, The Kinks, The Who. Those songs were timeless, but time kept ticking for us. The distance stretched wider, morphing into thousands of miles when it used to be metres. Our hearts never changed, though. They stayed brim-full of love. Mine was so full that it didn't even break when you told me the diagnosis, the prognosis. It just swelled with love that surrounded me, invisible like the air I breathed: 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen.

I flew through it that December night, high above the clouds where it was thin, a waterfall of tears gathering behind my eyes. You worried that's how I'd remember you—tubes and an oxygen mask. But the you that lives in my memories doesn't need those things. You're all the stories you told, and all the stories you became.

I still breathe them every day, like oxygen.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, check out some of my other non-fiction: Train Tracks: Return to Red Kite Country, Forests I Have Walked or Belonging.

Photo credit: Min An on pexels.com