Every Last Breath
| Autor: | Joanne Jacobson |
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| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. 13:117-118 |
| ISSN: | 1544-1733 1522-3868 |
| DOI: | 10.2307/41939103 |
| Popis: | What working surface, lives, It's not through but breathes. my the strokes sound choppy Listen. that of It's not my strokes that I hear when I swim, not muscles working through choppy water, slaps and kicks breaking the s rfac , bu the sound f my own breath: spitting, animal hunger for air. Open-mouthed, needing, I rise, sucking from whaťs just above the wet. Every heaving breath the living body knows could be the last. In the high quiet above the earth, migrating birds can hear life itself: the beat of wings and of breath, taking them to where there is food and where they can breed, the cycle beginning again every year. They sweep the sky in flocks so thick that they shadow the land below. The monarch butterfly one fifth of an ounce! finds its way the length of the continent north to south, fueled by air, sweet air setting wafer wings in vibration. From every room in her apartment, I can hear my mother's breath. The steady hiss of force not her own drawing from tubes and canisters in the interstices of television sound. Clear plastic is clipped in her nostrils, crossing her face; green tubing curls and uncurls in her wake. She turns and whips the knotting line behind her, untangling and clearing, making her careful way from the hall to the kitchen. She is feeding on oxygen. I remember how her breath used to quicken in the summer sun how she inhaled in even gulps between sets of tennis, balancing casually on the handle of her racquet. What required air she could easily do: take the green lawn with the mower in long, circling rows, leaving stacked clippings drying behind her in the heat; rake the heavy leaves to the curb at the chill, wet end of autumn; paint the kitchen walls; unload groceries from the car, lug bags |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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