chemical mercy

the breath I took
has come back to find me,
haunting the space between ribs
where relief was supposed to live.

One shot, and the inhaler with its spread
moves through the innards
like a changeling doing the work
I myself am not able to do.

That breath holds me
till a wheeze reaches for the last one.

Even with its chemical mercy,
its measured kindness in a plastic shell,
it has become something else now,
a signal interrupted, a wave that broke
before it reached the shore.

A seed was planted by betrayal
and shaped itself in the dark.
It stands before me now
where even the sharpest mirrors
cannot show me what it is exactly.

I am guilty, I have said it,
of taking what was not mine to take,
though mine is only a word
this tongue invented for itself.

If only I did not have to carry
the full architecture of this thinking,
the weight of it, the floorplan, the foundations,
But I have chosen to live,
or living chose me,

Mediocrity, they said, and named me guilty.

Prompt: One shot

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