Taking the Keys Back

For thirty days the ceiling was my map,

the heavy quilt a sediment of stone.

I lived inside the middle of a lapse,

a tenant in a house of skin and bone.

Today I stepped out on the wooden slats

and felt my lungs remember how to bloom.

The air isn't heavy with the 'this' and 'thats'

of everything we buried in the room.

I walked until the sidewalk turned to dirt,

until the cold sweat broke across my neck.

It’s a sharp, clean kind of local hurt,

the kind that clears the engine and the wreck.

My ribs don't catch the light the way they did.

The hitch is gone. I’m standing in the lot.

I’ve spent a month pretending to be dead.

It’s terrifying, realizing I’m not.