Breathless Boy

Lungs like burnt paper— folded too many times by hands that forgot how to be gentle. Morning comes with wires. He wears machines like second lungs, ghosts that sleep beside him and hum. Each breath is an audition. He performs survival on a stage made of ribs— a collapsed theatre with no curtain call. They say he's brave. He knows better. Even the dying don’t always want to be remembered as metaphors. He coughs, and something inside him shakes loose— a childhood, maybe. A sandcastle he never got to finish. His chest heaves like storm clouds, tight and swollen— each gasp a fight against chains no one can see. His sputum tastes like rust— iron and despair, bitter enough to sting the back of his throat every single day. Medicine bottles line the shelf— bitter pills, salty sprays, a pharmacy of survival he carries in his pockets like unwanted secrets. His laughter? A spark in a flooded cathedral. It echoes— defiant, half-holy. Doctors take notes as if writing him into science. But he is not data. He is weather— unpredictable, brewing. Some nights, he feels like a galaxy trying to fit inside a bottle. Other nights, just the bottle. He loves anyway— recklessly, with lungs that bruise like fruit, with eyes that memorise goodbyes before anyone says them. When sleep comes, it doesn’t knock. It slides in through the window, soft as fog and just as indifferent. Still, he breathes. Maybe not well. But beautifully. Like a hymn the sky forgot it needed. In loving memory of my dear friend, Nathan Davis, a brave soul who faced cystic fibrosis with courage beyond his years. Gone too soon at 22, but never forgotten.