{"id":4772,"date":"2017-06-02T11:56:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T11:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=4772"},"modified":"2017-06-02T11:56:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T11:56:51","slug":"between-love-and-a-breath-loren-kleinman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=4772","title":{"rendered":"Between Love And A Breath – Loren Kleinman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/h1>\n
    \n
  1. Counting breath<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Far away from Fifth Avenue,
    \na sparrow,
    \nits tiny needle heart
    \nabove mine.<\/p>\n

    No more falling earth.
    \nNo more trains bound by time.
    \nNo more hours in the gut of the city.<\/p>\n

    Now:
    \nburning leaves,
    \ncinnamon-scented air.<\/p>\n

    I unlace my breath,
    \ncount the times
    \nI felt like a highway
    \nin the middle of the afternoon,
    \nstone hard wind
    \nagainst the street sign:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The hospital bed<\/li>\n
    2. next to grandmother<\/li>\n
    3. her final breath<\/li>\n
    4. it hurts<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Following breath<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        When I\u2019m down on my knees, uprooting the worn ground, scraping weeds from the side of the house, I try to catch my breath, a firefly on the run, but end up following it to the earthworm\u2019s body as it writhes under the lawn bag.<\/p>\n

        It\u2019s almost lunchtime, but I feel the need to stay and help it back to the dirt, return it home.<\/p>\n

        I pinch its middle and throw it towards the end of the garden, far away from my hand hoe, its slick body pulling itself through the damp earth.<\/p>\n

        Past the haze of my own desire to finish, to uproot the bare-limbed daisies, I follow earthworm, let out a low hummed breath, again and again, a sentimental ode, a mindful elegy for the impossible weight of our shared life.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Measuring breath<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Hold him tighter, mom. <\/em>The vet pricks Brutus\u2019 back with the IV. His eight-pound body squirms against my chest.<\/p>\n

          This will all be over soon, and I\u2019ll get you ice cream<\/em>, I whisper in his ear. His brown eyes bulge with fear.<\/p>\n

          How could I make him understand that everything is temporary, that even right then, as I held him I was already thinking of the after<\/em>, the two of us, heads in the ice cream bowl of the future?<\/p>\n

          After 10 minutes, he\u2019s hydrated enough to go home. The doctor prescribes him some antibiotics for the kennel cough, and says he should start eating and drinking.<\/p>\n

          He tilts his head towards mine, and we share a private smile under the cold, white lights of the infirmary.<\/p>\n

          With whatever strength consumes him, his tail sweeps my stomach, and he pants against my warm cheek.<\/p>\n

          Barely balancing, he lifts his head and pushes off, puts four paws to the tile.<\/p>\n

          Nose up, he walks out of the exam room, his fuzzy tail bouncing behind him as he leaves a trail of urine.<\/p>\n

          All hail, King Brutus. <\/em><\/p>\n

          I stand and watch him, his unrelenting presence, his refined face lowered, a heavy bloom sigh in a garden of daisies.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Breathing outward (or dying breath)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            From time to time, without knowing why, I watch the moon alone. Her moonshine face, a slick red bucket left in the rain, peels away the darkness.<\/p>\n

            Gasp moonstone.
            \nGasp moon crater.
            \nGasp virgin moon.<\/p>\n

            When I was a child, I\u2019d watch her from my bed, through my moon window, through my moon heart.<\/p>\n

            I wish I were a moon river, a rock in her back, gravity in her throat.<\/p>\n

            Breathe out sparrow heart,
            \nworm hole,
            \nspiral tail.<\/p>\n

            Breathe in hollow bone,
            \nfirefly,
            \nbare rose.<\/p>\n

            Dear moon,
            \ngo on calling me
            \nfrom outside the closed window,
            \nunder the shade of my roof,
            \nas I call back to you,
            \nas I declare my presence,
            \nas I let my words form a breeze,
            \ngo somewhere I\u2019ve never been.
            \n 
            \n <\/p>\n

            \n

            LAST DAY ON EARTH<\/strong><\/p>\n

            There have been so many nights of listening, yet not enough doing:
            \nA vortex of nothingness in my notebook, the unopened mail and the unmade bed. On my last day on earth, I might let these things slide. I\u2019ll be imperfect, write the crappiest sentence I can think of: I feel sad enough to sink a ship. In the evening, I won\u2019t wear makeup or tie my hair. Instead, I\u2019ll swivel in the thick of my chair, naked as a cat, the small electric bulb swinging above me.
            \nAnd when the light grows less, I\u2019ll start a new sentence. Something like: It was a dry summer. The trees starved for rain. Almost all the season was a bare rose, promising complete darkness, and nothing but sleep.
            \n 
            \n <\/p>\n

            \n

            ROSE<\/strong><\/p>\n

            I want your heartache, pricked thumb, blackened dirt, tangled weed, little razor.
            \nMake a hill out of me, a pile of chicken bones.<\/p>\n

             
            \n 
            \nLoren Kleinman has published four full-length poetry collections: Flamenco Sketches, The Dark Cave Between My Ribs, Breakable Things<\/em>, and Stay with Me Awhile<\/em>, and a memoir The Woman with a Million Hearts<\/em>. Her personal essays have been published in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Woman\u2019s Day, Seventeen, USA Today, Good Housekeeping<\/em>, and The Huffington Post,<\/em> while her poetry appeared in The New York Times, Drunken Boat, The Moth, Columbia Journal, Patterson Literary Review<\/em>, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            Counting breath Far away from Fifth Avenue, a sparrow, its tiny needle heart above mine. No more falling earth. No more trains bound by time. No more hours in the gut of the city. Now: burning leaves, cinnamon-scented air. I unlace my breath, count the times I felt like a highway in the middle of [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[247],"class_list":["post-4772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-calm-steady-by-michelle-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4772"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4785,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions\/4785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}