For L.L.

my right side is overachieving so when the nurse noted that my right lung

didn’t inflate nearly as well as the left, we collectively were insulted

and worried that the left lung might get lazy, rolling over relaxing into

the place called death by asphyxiation, not noticing that me, that is , I

have a vested interest in this whole affair of breathing through the

longest lines of a Walt Whitman poem or some other snobbish thing

the alternative is to be breathless.