Hall of Air

Vinyl hiss, rain at the corner.
My coat argues with the wind.
I clock the minutes like lit cigarettes—
no lift, no ride, just streetlight on puddles
and your voice on loop:
not tonight, be done, close it, listen.

Back home, the door is papered with orders—
neat tape, deadlines, the headline: plan hard
or crash by thirty-three. I thumb the taped edge,
smoke the morning thin, cut fringe at dawn
and hate it. Bleach stings; the mirror clouds, asks,
easy now—who do you want?

Pick a lane, you say,
then drag the sign across the road.
Wrong when I speak.
Wrong when I keep quiet.
A snare-tight pause—one beat, nothing moves.

let me breathe
let me breathe
set me free
let me breathe

You mail clean links: start Monday, punch in.
By noon you call—where did you go?
I am gold until I answer,
guilty when I laugh,
and tears are too much unless the clocks agree
on a time when feeling is allowed.

Too sharp, too slow,
too loud, too soft—
the labels multiply.
I carry the blame like bags without handles,
no room left for the strange thing I am.

I won’t fit your grid.
Truth over neat, every time.
I walk off the paper,
past dotted lanes and tidy arrows,
into weather with no checkbox.

Windows unhook. The room learns wind.
The taped rules unpeel, ash and travel.
A long hall of air opens, breath by breath;
a sign falls face-down in the rain, unread—
and over the rush I say:

let me breathe
let me breathe
set me free
let me breathe

let me breathe.