I used to live by a forest in Maryland. Deer used to frequent my backyard until they cut the forest down for a new housing complex. I had a dream of my home from before the forest was torn, where pine needles blanketed the ground with pricks and blades of green.

I was barefoot on a bed of needles by the plum tree they planted at my birth. I held my breath. Insidiously, air escaped without my notice.

The forest used to have a small wooden sign in front of it. I never got the chance to read it. I never entered the forest, and now it’s gone.

I couldn’t breathe for more than five minutes or so, and with each minute that passed, my lungs would slowly collapse and choke and empty itself of air. The clean, fresh, crisp, pale air hadn’t disappeared; it couldn’t satisfy. Gulp after gulp after heave, running vulnerable without soles, falling onto patches in the woods, I met me.

He was a boy I knew, because he was me. He looked like me, if I were a boy. His throat was open, with a valve in place of his adam’s apple.

He was the same as I. We couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t speak. This other me took my hand in one and held a bicycle pump in his other, and he gestured to my trachea, which was also open and empty and aching.

This boy who was me who couldn’t breathe was like me who couldn’t breathe and we were empty in our lungs and we were suffocating. Sputtering with effort he attached the bicycle pump to my throat otherwise I would die and we had to share the bicycle pump for air otherwise we would die so he attached the pump to this valve opening on our throats and we had to pump the air into our lungs because we would die otherwise because we couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t breathe

I was in someplace familiar. A densely wooded forest I had never entered, where pine needles hurt my bare feet, and I was escaping somewhere. Away and away I ran until I found a boy who was me who couldn’t breathe for more than five minutes. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe either.

With each minute that passed, my lungs would slowly collapse and choke and we had to share this bicycle pump for air and we would attach it to this valve opening in our throats and we would exchange the pump endlessly, pumping and breathing forcefully like a bubble being accidentally swallowed which didn’t hurt but sometimes I felt like I would pop but we had to otherwise we would die and somehow I ended up someplace familiar even though I never went there before and i ran away i don’t know why i just did i ran and i ran into this boy who i knew i think but he couldnt breathe for more than five minutes and suddenly i couldnt either and we had to share a bicycle pump for air otherwise
we
would
die.

Somewhere I don’t know, leaves stick and needles hurt feet. Why was I running? Where was I going? What am i running from Who is that boy Why cant he breathe for more than five minutes

A boy I didn’t know couldn’t breathe for more than five minutes and I couldn’t breathe for more than five minutes because of voids in our throats and with each minute that passed my lungs were collapsing and choking and dying and crying and screaming but he didnt have a bicycle pump so he died and i ran away and they found me in an unfamiliar place with needles in my blank feet and it hurt but i was dead or dying so it didnt matter nothing mattered but the feeling of something heavy crushing my chest and it hurt so much and no one in real life should need a bicycle pump this much and it hurt and I hurt and i couldnt breathe