When Breath Becomes Air Book Review Novels & Stories

He laughs at my reply even though it's even near being funny but oh well. "Feel my shirt. That's boyfriend material." He smirks. "It looks a little too clingy and hard to maintain." I roll my eyes. "Dang I thought I had you there." "You can't beat me, I'm a pro." I brag "Let's see about that." He takes a turn on the road. "I hope you know CPR because you take my breath away." "I don't. But I know karate and I could rip your lungs out." I smirk.

It was as though I was being bathed in one big ball of energy. One breath became two, and two became three, until the rhythm of my breathing merged seamlessly with the steady beat of my heart. Each breath was like a gust of wind that carried my desires towards the book, urging it to release itself from the confines of its resting place. And as my lungs released the final exhale, I opened my eyes, feeling a newfound surge of energy pulsate through my palms. There it was, a hell of a sight. The book I had fixated upon, hard and warm, now resided between my hands.

He could feel it the way you felt a change in the weather before it arrived — not seeing it yet but sensing the pressure of it, the particular quality of air before something broke open. He picked up his book. He turned to the first page and actually read it.

Chapter 1 I let out a harsh breath as I hide in between the gigantic roots. The air filled my lungs again, but I almost thought that the air I was breathing in was made of knives and blades. And although my throat is dry and my legs and arms shake against the coldness of December night air, I took a breath after a breath.

Really breathe. THE END.

The air gets colder the deeper it goes, which is wrong, cold should sit at the top and let the warmth sink, and the wrongness of it tells me more about what lives here than anything he has said. Frost grows on the walls in feathers and ferns. My breath hangs in front of me and does not fade. Somewhere far below, something vast and slow breathes in the dark, in and out, in and out, patient as tide, and after a while I understand that the breathing is the mountain full of his hollowed silvers, dozens of them, all drawing the same borrowed air at the same borrowed pace, and I have to stop and put my hand flat on the freezing wall until the urge to scream goes back down my throat where it belong

It was simply sky, the blue of late afternoon, streaked with the first hints of sunset, the color of a world that had never learned to bargain, never learned to exchange, never learned to weigh the worth of a soul against the duration of a life. She breathed. The air was cold and sharp and tasted of pine and dust and the particular, living smell of a world that continued without demanding payment. Her lungs burned, but it was the burn of exertion, not the burn of wasting. Her heart hammered, but it was the hammering of survival, not the slow, measured countdown of debt. She was alive.

I know what this means the end is near. “Breathe in,” he murmurs, low, intimate. I obey. The air fills only the top of my lungs. He holds me there, and I want to panic, but I don’t. “And out.” As I exhale, his weight presses me down, coaxes the breath from my chest, leaving me hollow, empty.

I backed up to get a look at his face, still dragging air into my lungs. His voice slid under my skin like icy water and I fought off the urge to throw up. He stepped behind me, one hand patting my back. “Easier if you stop forcing it,” he murmured. “Let the air come in on its own. No need to rush the air. Just breathe, Baby.” The absurdity of being comforted by the man who’d just made it impossible for me to breathe almost made me laugh. Almost, because I wasn't finding anything particularly funny at the moment.

That's where I inhaled and it's like the first time I breathe again. What the fuck is that? End of Chapter - QJG