Notes About The Poem
'1453 ' Contest Info
Sponsor Brian Strand
3/19/2026
The Weight of Breathing
I'm shaking—
It's the kind of cold that starts in my chest
and spills out of my eyes because I don't have anywhere else
to put it anymore.
Eight years. I gave you eight years of "it's okay," while my credit bled out in the dark
and the house I love turned into a graveyard of your things.
How could you?
That's the part that catches in my throat.
How could you take my home and turn it into a cage,
then tell me I'm the monster for wanting to breathe?
I look at the trash, the piles, the ruin...
and then I look at the photos of those kids
and my heart just...it just breaks. It's in pieces.
I'm so angry I could scream until the walls crack,
but I'm so sad I can barely whisper.
You're using them.
You're using their little faces to shield yourself from the truth—
that you broke the deal, not me.
You broke the trust, not me.
It's not fair.
It's just not fair that the price of my own sanity
is being told I'm dead to my own family.
I'm sitting here in the wreckage of what I tried to build for us,
sobbing for the kids I won't get to hold
because I dared to say "no more."
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