Morning smoke billows through cracks of broken windows,

and the air tastes of iron—like rusty old coins on the tongue.

Even the wind tires of threading through the same narrow streets,

brushing past faces that have forgotten the taste of untainted air.

 

Our lungs ache, heavy with the city’s poison haze—

not from labor alone, but from the hush of smoke-choked streets. 

Somewhere, a mother boils water blackened by rain,

tracing each ripple for children she will soon wake,

her breath fogging the pot’s edge, a quiet defiance rising with the steam.

 

And yet, we breathe.

Out of habit. Out of need.

Out of something that once resembled faith.

 

They call it strength, the way we fade through dust,

through smoke climbing our ribs like a thief,

stealing the air we should call our own, 

leaving only silence where breath should be.

But strength was never meant to taste like metal,

or to sound like a ragged breath.

 

We mistook the ache of breathing for proof of life.

 

We are told this is resilience,

as if survival dressed in suffering were something holy,

as if the ache were proof that we are blessed to endure.

But even grace needs space to breathe,

and there is none left here.

 

Sometimes, I think the air remembers better days:

every promise broken, every name drowned in floodwater,

every prayer that rose with smog and never descended.

It harbors the ghosts of toilers who once dared to breathe freely,

before the air turned its back on them.

 

Now, factories hum their last confession,

and rivers choke on the remnants of old campaigns.

Still, we inhale what’s left of the country—

thin and toxic, a bitter aftertaste of history, yet ours.

 

Between each labored breath, I dream of air that demands no payment,

of mornings when throat no longer stings to swallow,

and lungs fill free from the weight of debt. 

 

Perhaps it begins with a breath unbound—

one drawn not in fear of losing, but in the promise of enough.

We owe the world nothing of our pain;

we live despite it, not because of it.

 

So listen: beneath the coughs, the wheezes, the weary sighs,

there is a pulse that refuses to quiet.

It hums between our ribs—a faint revolt,

the body moving, at last, beyond survival.

 

And when we finally exhale, it will not be surrender

but reclamation—

the breath that was always ours to take.

 

Art slider by Rae Allenson Esteban