reading room
The Weight of Air
I. I used to think gravity was cruel. Now I know it only wants me home. The bridge hums above the road, steel bones holding the ache of staying. Below, headlights drift like thoughts unfinished, each one dissolving into somewhere else. The air opens its palms. It doesn't argue. It holds me the way exhaustion holds sleep. But the air is not mercy. It measures conviction. Sometimes it spares you, halts the descent mid-dream, asking what it is you're falling from. It wants truth, not rehearsal, a faith that risks remaining. The night folds close, not tender, only inevitable. For a moment the world forgets language, no metaphor, no performance, only pressure, only motion, exact and certain. Each morning I put on a voice that sounds almost like mine. The body releases its grammar. I become a sentence that no one finishes. And for that instant, between decision and the inevitable, I feel lighter than mercy, heavier than grace.
II. The air forgets me by morning. At the lake, it begins again. Water waits at the seam of worlds, quiet, patient, familiar. Light fractures, forgetting its colour. The air above it trembles, undecided, whether to hold or let go. Sometimes I imagine stepping in, letting it rewrite me in syntax only silence knows. No name to pronounce wrong, no shape to disguise. It would take what it's given and call it complete. I envy that logic, a blur without shame, to rest inside one's own disappearance. But the thought of their grief tightens around my ribs. So I stay where the air is heavy, breathing for them, for the ones who never ask what it costs.
III. The air inside is thinner. Some days the vanishing was slower, no form, no sound, only the mind folding inward. The body learned obedience: wait, hush, reduce. Paperwork of living. Sign here. Continue. Each pulse signs its name again. Then a quiet began to move, not from outside but from within, a slow turning inward, light fading toward the centre until stillness took its shape. It felt as though the world were receding from my skin, deliberate, patient, testing how much of me would remain. The calm grew dense around me, a listener without question. The air outside kept its distance. I wanted to say how heavy pretending becomes, how masking grinds the mind smooth. I think it already knew.
IV. Survival is aftermath. The pulse renews its contract. The lungs stamp the form again. Outside, engines repeat their prayer. I pass the bridge. Its hum is the same note the world plays when no one listens. The road below keeps shining, a river of repetition. I don't fear the places anymore. They were never promises, only mirrors for the weight I carried. If rest is still waiting, if it waits without impatience, the air before rain, and hush before a name is spoken. Tonight I keep the body, its tremor, its noise, its ache to appease. I breathe, slow and deliberate, and feel the weight ease by degrees. The air loosens. It lets me stay, not because I've earned it, but because it has learned patience. Between us, something merciful holds.
— Lilith