The flight attendant always told me to put my oxygen mask on before
assisting others. Before resisting to start lifting the sun to the sky, before
pretending this isn’t a disguise, to hide what I’m seeking to speak behind
the rhyme, before my palms char from cradling the sun in my arms. Make
me your shooting star. The way these wings are burning but still flying,
turning to ash but denying to breathe, defying these wounds their right to see
a fraction of light for a fraction of time; fractal like branches fragmenting
my family line, taking what’s meant to be mine, I never wore my oxygen
mask that day. Asphyxiated till I decayed, my family bathed in their blissful
ignorance— what I’m trying to say is this: I buried my lungs in a grave
I don’t ever visit. The tombstone explicit in it’s erosion; my casket
tumbling. Fumbled from these fingers unconsenting—
Do you feel it?
After that moment, where he roamed my body without my permission,
where my larynx was burned & blurred into this mess of a mouth, I learned
to take every airplane imaginable. To every distance. Around the coast of
my existence; 300 miles. 30,000 feet high. My engines roared to life, yet I
was just a passenger in my own flight— walking to the tiny cockpit.
A silent dance there, with the ghost of the life I almost had, slipping through
my fingers like ash, like a crashing plane, like a noisy machine forced not
to scream, like this throat. Self-taught in the art of choking on what began
as a secret. Lived so long it turned into an elegy: Can you help me?
Will you help me? Cause I can’t breathe but the flight attendant said not to panic.
Just brace for impact as this body is first exhibit then exploited, innards
swollen then stolen— he said he would go slowly. That the life-vest
would fill slowly, they said: Just wait! Don’t worry. If there’s no air,
if you can’t breathe, it’s just turbulence— You’ll get used to it. You better
get used to it; don’t scream. Know that you are meant to suffocate in silence.
Don’t you dare ask the flight attendant for help, even as your engine sputters
out its last breath— even as this plane nosedives into the Pacific— get used to
the whiplash, the flashbacks, the nausea, the guilt— get used to it cause it’s
your life now; it takes a moment to crash but an eternity to put the pieces back,
to fix the damage, to salvage this wreck of a human being;
Do you see it?
Cause I’ve tried to write this poem over 200 times now. But it's not easy when
you’re this good at convincing yourself it never happened. As if wishing upon
enough stars will make it true. It never happened. It never happened. It happened
& that's okay. But I don’t want to fall down again. Don’t want to fall & drown again,
don’t want to have to act intact again. Don’t want to pretend like it’s okay if I can’t
breathe as long as those I love can. Cause that scar runs the length of my body. A
mosaic of surviving a plane crash & not telling anyone— It took a long time to find
those lungs I buried away. To learn to love this body. To turn from passenger to pilot, to realize that no one can steal my right to breathe. So if my voice asks me again
to put my oxygen mask on before assisting others
just know that I’m going to speak.
Do you hear it?
K. Sundaram is a poet based in Northern California. His work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the National YoungArts Foundation, among others. His poetry typically focus on explorations of loss, identity, and growth.
Comments