if it was too difficult—

but we do it again and again like breath

that you cannot help but expel in order to take in more

(a mixed tape from some blue-eyed boy has in the lyrics of a track mid-way through “love is like oxygen”, dramatic and heavy, makes me blush; followed by Pulp singing “Common People”, because I’m not; followed by a track of his own voice recorded)

For some of us, falling is like living, inevitable and effortless.

My friend rolls her eyes and goes to her job but I’m saying: We—the people—

(I feel like a Founding Father) do not

know how to live right, straight up. Comb our hair. Set our teeth in line.

We too go to jobs and pay our bills and brush our teeth and say our prayers and the hearts we’ve broken bleed out all over town in rivers

It was never meant

—not even once. We were just taking in some air,

again-again-again, like that.