About Breath

we’re together round a small screen
like I remember when you were young
round the hearth   but there’s no flame
and the doctor is pointing with a red pen
at a cavity between your lungs   talking
about lymphocytes which have formed
like a new territory   a whereabouts
we’re heading towards   and this breath
this every-day in and out   is sucked
with a gasp   the force of a fist
inside my chest   and I am aghast
how my breath I hardly notice   now breathes

 

 
Gill Horitz lives near Wimborne, Dorset.  Her writing has been published in magazines and anthologies, including Mslexia, Smiths Knoll, Frogmore Papers, Tears in the Fence, Rialto and anthologies.  Her pamphlet, All The Different Darknesses, was published by Cinnamon Press,.