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    More Than Air
    More Than Air
    More Than Air
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    More Than Air

    By S. E. McKenzie

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A collection of 26 pieces of prose that focus on love, loss, and the idea of redemption. Each piece reflects an internal struggle or external grief, with the hope that every reader understands the main message: no one fights alone, and we are made of more than air.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherS. E. McKenzie
    Release dateJul 22, 2014
    ISBN9781311353092
    More Than Air
    Author

    S. E. McKenzie

    Shannan McKenzie is a 25 year old author based out of North Florida. A voracious reader, part-time Bath & Body Works employee, and Sacred Harp singer, she splits the rest of her time between yarn-crafts, writing her heart out, and photography trips with her husband.

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      Book preview

      More Than Air - S. E. McKenzie

      More Than Air

      Copyright 2014 S.E. McKenzie

      Published by S.E. McKenzie at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      More Than Air

      First Breath After Coma

      For All Of Our Silences

      Double-Jointed

      The Bones of You

      Before & After (You.)

      We Burned Down Something Beautiful

      Music for The Mourning, After

      Owning

      Perchance, To Dream

      Reasons I Can’t Breathe Anymore

      Between The Lines

      You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To

      Colorblind

      The Rain Loved Her

      Sometimes, I Remember You In Fall

      Sometimes, I Remember You In Winter

      You Feel Like The Wind

      Stealing Gold from Pirates

      You Can’t Be Contained

      Sicknesses Worth Having

      Beautiful Things, Like You

      Darling, I Want To

      Reverse Psychology For Dummies

      I Love You All The Time

      Swan Songs for Saving

      More Than Air.

      Sometimes you kiss me, and you wonder why I taste like sleep.

      The simple answer is that the bags under my eyes are bruise-y purple-blue because they are filled with galaxies of dreams. There is a hand-shaped numb spot on my right thigh that feels like the sun, and you did not put it there. I have learned your silhouette and the curve of your shoulders better than I know my alphabet. Sleep comes easy to those who have nothing left to regret. Insomnia is never a secret, because it carves itself into your appearance, and that is why I never kiss you back.

      Sometimes you kiss me, and you tell me that you need me.

      The simple answer is that needing and wanting look the same to children. I spend my time wondering what you’re thinking, and I am flustered when I find I don’t want to know after all. I am giggle-prone and a little too much an Alice out of Wonderland. You are no Mad Hatter, and everyone knows that only Hatters can really ever love Alice’s. You breathed just fine without me when I was out needing him, and I could probably survive without you, but I refuse to try.

      Sometimes you kiss me, and I am afraid.

      The simple answer is that I love you past sanity and phone calls during respectable hours. I love you beyond sweet kisses and diamond rings. I love you scary, into dark alleyways and inside skeevy bars. I love you into bus stations at 2am and into the cramped back seats of parked cars. I love your brittle bits and tender pieces, those scars you hide in the quiet. The secret is not that you are living with scars; it is that I love you, and I am afraid.

      Sometimes you kiss me, and your words taste like love songs.

      The simple answer is that you speak musicals like art across blank walls and I am a field of graffiti in your wake. You speak symphonies of rapture and I am a deaf woman learning to hear for the very first time. You know every note by heart and you are teaching me humbly, one sound at a time. I spent four years in band and I never learned to read music anyway. You taught me that silence was the most perfect herald of joy, even when my heart was screaming.

      The truth is that you are teaching me that life is more than air.

      First Breath After Coma.

      I can’t remember the last time I breathed deep enough to matter, and oh! The oxygen costs so dearly that soon, I’m sure, we’ll be outfitted with masks and steam filters and iron lungs, and a brand new set of morals that will seem far less questionable given time.

      Soon, enough will be more than adequate, and I will teach my skin to forget just how fantastically warm your breath was in the dim-light dream-time, because oxygen is oxygen and memories just cost too damn much to make any new ones.

      You will have to accept this – it is all that I have inside that’s not pieced together and held shut with wires and wishes, and if I could make you believe me, believe me that I would try. I would tell you how my blood is thinner now – because I don’t breathe so much, you see, and oh! how you should try it sometime – so I will bleed freely, should you choose to attack. I know you will give me that look behind your dark glasses, but there’s just not enough air inside me for me to really care. You sure bought the farm on this one, love.

      Sometimes though. Sometimes I cheat. I slip out into the darkness, open my lungs wide and b r e a t h e. It’s close to sinful and it’s delicious and it tickles me somewhere inside, deep and hidden. The air fills me up so full I am nearly drowning. And then I let it go – one hissing exhale at a time. I do it so much that the dizzy feeling in my fingertips nearly goes away

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