Holding: 09.14.2013

Posted by this week's guest writer, Casey Bauer. Casey likes sarcasm, sitting by water docks, and the word "idiosyncrasy". She doesn't share her writing often, but if she does, it means she really likes you, too.

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A perpetual presence of lack lodged in her larynx: it was like she had been holding her breath for years. Her head would swim as delirious cloud bubbles bounced around inside, making words lose their syllables and punctuation fall flat. She hated these moments; moments so strong, long, and full of such a yearning for that someone, it was like witnessing as air and words, the two things she required most, rid themselves of oxygen and literacy, only to be replaced with a swooning head and a sore heart. But even worse than this? Time. Time as the single, tormenting constant standing in her way and slowly tightening its grip on her neck.

Needless to say, she and Time never stood steadily on the same soil. Never did Time have faster feet, than when hers only wanted to anchor, and never was it so slow, than when all she wanted was to race ahead into the arms of that someone, and forget that such a thing existed at all. Any excitement built up in her stomach would melt away whenever she looked at a clock, and she would kick herself, realizing that she was losing some sort of sick game. Instead, she liked to replace the concept of Time with the notion that the world hid tunnels in our backyards that made dipping in and out of moments as easy as exhaling. She imagined little notes scribbled by friends and family all over the world, waiting for her at the entrance of every moment. They would invite her to join them and have a cup of coffee, day or night because, well, caffeine intake didn’t matter when Time didn’t exist, and why would tunnels exist at all if not for the sake of using them for spontaneous coffee breaks with loved ones? Breathing would flow like laughter, and breathless, light-headedness would be a thing of the past, the “past” being a Time-related concept hardly anyone would understand how to grasp.

But as Time diligently reminded her, she could only hold her breath for so long. After what felt like years with this delirious cloud bubble bobbing around inside her head, she was finally able to do the one thing her body was telling her she wanted to do. Had to do. She exhaled.

And it was then that an ecstasy flooded her limbs with a weight that made her sink lower, yet hover higher, than whenever her last real breath was. That miserable time of lack had passed now, and here, in the midst of that face, that touch, that voice, that moment that plucked her pitiful pulsing pith, here is where the words flowed freely and the oxygen swam through her entire body. Here is where she found herself living her dream of crouching in her imaginary, liminal tunnel between Here and There, a place where she would never have to say goodbye or hello again, and anyone she had ever loved crouched in the tunnel with her, sharing their coffee and laughs.

But as quickly as it came, it also passed, and she received a swift smack back to the waiting game all over again, being forced to inhale. The countdown rewound as she felt that familiar lack of oxygen in her larynx and the beginnings of a head swoon. It wasn’t welcomed, but she was refreshed and ready, because didn’t someone once say that waiting was always worth it?

Well, at least she got really good at holding her breath.