SOMETIMES, IF YOU STOP BREATHING by Jhilmil Breckenridge

This poem was written after a walk at dawn by a canal and a marina…

I was alone, and the images over the water were so meditative and so calm, and you could hear stillness speaking. I walked, took photographs, and came right back to write this poem. With my interest in yoga and meditation, I also found this attention to the breath echoed in this poem.

Sometimes, if you stop breathing

by Jhilmil Breckenridge 

sometimes 

if you stop breathing

you can hear

you can hear the sound

of the single drop of water

as it drips 

onto a bit of tin

amidst the grass and the mud

or the sound of the ducks’ 

feathers as they play 

in the eddies

or the sound of the sun

as it rises over the grey canal

kissing it to life

over treetops that are

japanese watercolours

and boats moored in the marina

memories of a time gone by

sometimes 

if you stop breathing

you can feel

you can feel the breeze

on the hair of your arms

the wind as it chills your fingers

and you exhale

dragon breath

sometimes

if you stop breathing

you can feel 

life

in death

sometimes

if you stop breathing

you gasp

as you take in the details

the masthead 

on a boat

a dragon

with horns?

a greek god

to keep storms away?

hammered iron and blue

a totem

a good luck charm

a protective spell

sometimes

if you stop breathing

everything fades

and all we have 

is the now

the single breath

pain vanishes

and all that remains

is bliss

Jhilmil Breckenridge is a poet, writer and activist who speaks out about mental health, incarceration and abuse. She has just completed her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Westminster. Her poems often worry about issues of feeling lost in a changing world, the immigrant or foreign experience, love and loss and longing, and nostalgia for times gone by. She is Fiction Editor for a South Asian literary magazine, Open Road Review. She is working on her first novel and when she is not writing, she is chasing clouds and rainbows with her iPhone.

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