There is a particularly long-lifed strain of ennui that manifests with an alchemist’s trick. Oxygen is inhaled but transmutes into lead as it infuses into and inflates the lungs, weighing down those sorry balloons, putting pressure on all the internals. This incites a sort of breathy irritation, breathless infuriation, panicked and apathetic struggle for life. These flare-ups last the length of one or two gasps before the sense tells the reason that there is no immediate threat. But the reason is swimming in a maelstrom of unqualified emotion that pulls it down, tethered to the lungs that drop into a deep well of directionless, hopeless expression.
She is a pronoun without a subject and a dream that has never opened its eyes to the light. All my heaving breaths cannot suscitate the familiar spirit that comforts me in my sleep.