Blue lips
Purple fingernails
How I gasped for air that night
Sometimes breathing is a losing fight
It is a strange and odd thing
When your body turns against you
When it grows angry
And inflames
So your lungs don't work the same
I walked into that angel's arms
Here doctors, nurses worked to mend my harms
See the triage nurse
Right away she sends you back to a room
Soon you'll pose
Like a prisoner
Before a screen
And finally
Needle into arm
Mask over face
Breathe deep little one
Ignore the pains
Soon you will be right as rain.
Bronchial tubes perpetually inflamed
Trigger exposed
Tubes swell
Muscles constrict
Mucus produced
Isn't that an odd trick?
Yes, my body turns against me
And my muscles contrict
Around my lungs
Like a snake around its prey
Its even called bronchoconstriction
Shouldn't that be the name of snake?
Take a cocktail
Of bronchodilators
And corticosteroids
Sounds like chondrichthys
But not nearly as cool.
Some of the medicines taste just fine
Like that oddly good taste of liquid albuterol
But the acrid flavor of prednisone liquid won't do at all.
It was so bad, my mother would follow it with
spoonful of sugar - sweet
Now every day I must take
a luekotriene receptor antagonist
At least that sort of sounds cool I guess.
When I was a child I took it chewable
It's flavor - cherry - was quite doable.
Now I'm adult and I have to take it swallowable
But it doesn't taste bad - just quite bland.
And I suppose it works better than anything
And it doesn't elevate my heart rate
Like my inhaler - it gives me the shakes.
Sometimes it still strikes me
I remember there used to be a commercial
Where a child claimed
"Asthma is like a fish out of water."
I've always disagreed
Rather it is like
Someone stuck a hand in your chest
And made a fist around your lungs
It is quite unpleasant.
But it is what it is.
At least it's not as bad as when I was a kid.
So this one was a stretch. The penultimate prompt (cool word! sad circumstance) was to pick one of Sylvia Plath's poems and write a poem that is inspired by it and well . . . I sort of did. I selected Among the Narcissi which mentions "something on the lung" and "tries his breathing" so I produced this poem about my experience thus far with asthma.
Deep Breaths,
Sharon
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