I heard a breathing under the white noise of day
Rythmic yet always changing somehow
Slow during the sad parts and faster otherwise
I found myself walking in step with its beat

I sat on an old bench on a forgotten path
The forest green paint was chipping of
A rusty plack still clung to it's wooden chest
Quoting a man that not longer mattered

When I sat on it I heard it breathing too
Breathing hard with the sudden, extra weight
I fed blind pigeons bread crumbs from my pocket
Feeling guilty whenever they couldn't find a piece

I thought about the people of the world
Wondered if anyone at that moment missed me
If anyone cared that I was lost in an abandoned park
Sitting on a bench feeding dark eyed birds

Would a tree grow out of my decomposing remains
Would I be soil to a forest or even a tiny spruce
Or would wandering folks walk over my body
Admiring how the paint was chipping of it

I heard myself breathing between fits of guilt
It was the kind of breathing that carried sadness
My fears and doubts exhaled and other's back in
An exchange between broken-soled men

My knees cracked when I got back up
Alerting the world that I was about to move
I wondered if anyone in the city flinched
Sensing the sudden disturbance in the air

I heard that hypothetical man's hypothetical breath
Uncertain like any hypothetical situation is
Yet more certain than my own crumbling thoughts
That shattered at the quick blow of reality's fists

I walked between tall trees that grew from great men
They breathed the breaths of the remembered dead
They hid the abandoned park from all the city folk
That shivered from deep chills no one could explain