A New Kind of Breathing
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

Some dying people have nothing they want
to say. They give full rein to wonder, to being
visited by a journey. Come what may,
they head out away from you
to where a road is ready to carry them
to largely untested views–where their inclinations
to seek a prize are left behind,
where the slowly distancing body settles
into a new kind of breathing,
where what you think you want them
to say becomes a dark forest you must both
pass through until, finally fully free,
a dozen wings grow from your newly
given forms, and one of you flies
into the earth, and the other lifts away
from the earth, and which one is which
doesn’t become clear until you both
find your way.