He Is the Air I Breathe

By Erin Passons

Passons/He Is the Air I Breathe/ p.2

The curtains fell a year ago. Then the rugs went, and the paint started to peel. The new air makes gravity hard, but it makes breathing harder, which is why we carry tanks with us wherever we go. Martin says his coughing isn't as bad during the day, but he may be lying. I don't know; I never see him during the day anymore. The rules state: from 6 am to 5 pm, we only travel where we have to go. Mistresses' houses aren't on the list. Only work, post office, grocery store. Those types of places. Cars are monitored the most. Lucky me, I work from home. New life springs up during the darkness. What was once the hour of nocturnal rats and insomniacs has become the festival rouse for the living world. People open their homes and walk out. Chopin's Ballade No. 2, Op. 38 plays. A game of tag among children. I take my bottled water and oxygen tank to the driveway and sit. The tank clatters behind me when it hits the ground. It's March and the air feels dearer. Maybe it's because I know Martin will be here soon. The tricky fog of expectation clouding

Passons/He Is the Air I Breathe/ p.3 reality. I suck in air from the tank. I wait for Martin's Honda to come around. I don't wait for long. He's thin. But he's always been thin. Those grasshopper legs walk before him. He used to lie like a praying mantis above my small frame. I remember the bones of him well. I remember the swell of his need filling me, erupting-back then, back when, back in the day. A hacking cough shakes Martin when he sits beside me. I offer water. He waves it away and manages to gasp between coughs words that I'd never thought he'd say, "You won't believe this story." Surprise suspends me from immediately answering. Martin doesn't have stories. Martin offers very little. I take comfort in knowing what he does offer me is more than what he offers others; even then,

come on,

talk to me. "Oh?" I say. "Mom's cancer is gone. We don't know how." Martin pauses, then adds, "But maybe it's the air?” Of course it's the air. Because what once helped us live now only keeps us from dying. Because every remedy we used before is a lie. Our health has become our disease, and the disease is what keeps us alive. Martin leans down to kiss my neck before continuing, "I didn't know it was possible. We lived on borrowed time so long." I nod and kiss him back. Something stirs; I can't remember the name. Oh yes. Desire. # Winter, Spring-the months before the Changing-our lungs were unaware of the imminent war that lay ahead of them. They caroled at Christmas outings, expanding with the scent of pine. They appeared at New Year's Eve parties and obeyed when cigars

Passons/He Is the Air I Breathe/ p.4 were distributed. They expanded when the pools opened, and held fast like sentinels on May evenings of patio dancing, when the air was thick and the light shined longer, and the sun and moon kissed like lovers in a sky of violet and crimson. Through June and July, the burning days, the humid nights, they inhaled, exhaled, never complaining, and we never thanked them for it. Meanwhile, the air was dying, and if our lungs knew it, they kept their secrets, until one day they couldn't. It was August 23rd. The day of the Changing. It was also my birthday. The night before, Martin had come over with dinner. We sat on my porch sipping Chianti, the usual cloud of silence between us. The days apart were flooded with words-texts, emails-but in each other's company, we were mimes who spoke through gestures and touch. This was mostly through Martin's doing; his nonverbal verses sailed with either calm or panic, both of which at times seemed deceivingly identical. It was often up to me to decipher the color of his flag. "We went to the marriage counselor today," Martin said. Ah, panicked Martin. "Does he think your marriage is salvageable?" I asked. "He didn't say. I don't think it's his place to say." Martin's hand fell on my back, his way of saying, I've said enough. Martin didn't tell stories. We went inside. I led Martin to the couch where he sat while I disrobed. He left only after I fell asleep. It would be three years before I saw him again, although I didn't know it. I worked the rest of the morning and the afternoon. At night I met my friends downtown. We celebrated my conception with pints of

Passons/He Is the Air I Breathe/ p.5 beer and stale pretzels. At midnight I told my friends goodbye, quickly molding in and out of inebriated hugging before stumbling out of the doors. The pain hit before I reached my car, coming in daggers, one sharp stab after another. I clenched down and sucked in my breath, the intensity exploding. The world spun. My knees crumbled. Pavement scratched my cheeks and elbows. My mouth opened to scream, but it couldn't. No air. Life was shutting down, one organ after another, and around me the streets were dim pieces of geometry abstracting from their corners. My eyes dosed. When I opened them again, the world was still there, and yet it wasn't. Days had passed. Hundreds of us were at the hospital wearing identical gowns and oxygen masks. Identities shelved, we'd been absorbed into one expendable entity by a planet that had clearly disowned us. "Can you recall your name?" a nurse asked a patient. He said no. Not uncommon. Many were mentally-damaged after the Changing. Their brains craved oxygen for too long. When it came, it came too late. Yet they were the luckier ones. Many didn't make it. My parents didn't, nor did my friends. I knew none of this when I first awoke, however. All I knew was the screaming, the wailing, and the alarm going off constantly, with nurses running down the hallway in one direction, then the other. Urgency, I thought. Trauma. A bomb? Terrorism? "We don't know," the nurse answered when I asked. "No one knows." She examined my hospital bracelet to confirm my identity. "You live on Congress?

That's far," she said. "The

Passons/He Is the Air I Breathe/ p.6 train is running. There's a waiting list. You can walk but it will take hours. You'll need an extra tank to get there.

Not

sure if insurance covers it, but I'll check." # Years passed, days like slivers of time being shaved away from the little hope I had left of seeing Martin again. When hope started to fade, pieces of him began to fade too-his scent, his voice, the shape of his nose. And his smile-that was the last to go. I remember the day it left. I was standing at the sink, cleaning a vase, when his smile flashed before my eyes, then never again. The bruises on my heart from the rapid beating it had endured whenever Martin was near, the voice that said my love was near-that was all I had left. My broken heart. And thank God for it, otherwise I might not have looked up that day in the cafe when it began to quake for no apparent reason, and my eyes wouldn't have found his smile again, and he might have been lost forever. # The curtains fell a year ago. I've nailed sheets to the walls, but the threads are thinning, and my home welcomes the moon unarmed. It's glowing down on us when Martin and I walk through the door and I think, we are swords that stab the night. All we can hope for is surrender. Martin follows me to the bed and we lie down. He extends his arm. My head falls upon it. I don't speak, nor does he. Only so much room to breathe. When he starts to snore, I turn to watch him. His hair rests like a halo against the pilgrimage of my pillow. I reach out to touch its strands, and somewhere

Passons/He Is the Air I Breathe/ p.7 inside of me, serenity begins to sing, and I close my eyes. Because that's all it takes sometimes-his breathing-just to keep me alive. The exhale, the inhale, the breathing in, the breathing out. The in, the out, the in, the…