Asthma

I.
 
Fifty-three dinosaurs roam the basement floor—
a belly-up triceratops awaits
 
a looming allosaurus bite.
My son knows every classification,
 
bird- or lizard-hipped, carnivore
teeth, serrated or herbivore flat—
 
he played them like Barbies
with a survival story in every staging.
 
II.
 
As he awakes atop the T-rex quilt
hand-stitched by my mother,
 
and his chest struggles up and sinks
like a wounded animal, I phone his nurse.
 
As every question she asks confirms my fear,
I hear Mozart’s Alla Turca, my piano stuck
 
on the part I’ve practiced for months to no avail
drumming dissonance deep into my psyche.
 
He can’t sit up. Should I bring him in?
She asks me to check the color of his skin.
 
Grey.
 
III.
 
Grey recalls April ocean cocooning
Santa Barbara’s rocky shore,
 
off-leash dogs, early morning fog, sand crabs’
tiny legs giggling in our palms.
 
Once, we buried him
in sand, watched him jiggle his toes.
 
Grey is the wind dragging rain
through clouds, bruise through sky.
 
IV.
 
An ambulance wailing        	counting      	every
 
breath—
 
Survive                                	ER doors open
 
A doctor apologizes               
 
                                        I don’t know why                   
 
 
They try with oxygen            
 
Monitors beep                                 	my son
 
 
             vomits         	fenced by rip currents
 
 
                                                                  I am exiled
 
on an island of waiting                      
 
I count         	triceratops’s three horns,
 
eight hundred teeth,                        	sixteen neck frill spikes
 
infinity                    	of useless minutes.                 
 
 
V.

Ten days in the hospital,
while we relearn inhaling.
 
Breathe in and hold . . .
let all the air out—
 
until his mind screams Give.
Hold the spacer to his mouth,
 
press the button and Breathe in
until he’s pregnant
with air. And Hold—
 
VI.
 
The biggest baby in the nursery
and breech, he freed himself from my womb
 
screaming for milk, lungs so full
of air, legs so long, he walked
 
from the surgery suite and asked
the doctor for a lollipop.
 
On the stretcher, I struggled to capture
my breath, the milk refused to release.
 
VII.
 
Three times we visited the ER        	Three times
 
They never made us wait    	his masked face
 
like a deep sea diver with the bends
 
Prednisone  	Advair         	Albuterol
 
                                                            and the magic Budesonide
 
you only get in the ER—
                                      till finally                	he can breathe
 
VIII.
 
He chose to play the most difficult French horn.
 
Performing at fourteen, Mozart
Concerto #4 in E-flat major emerges
 
from tightly-spiraled pipes, each note
a petal fanning from a sunflower’s center
 
leaving us lush in a field of dappling.
When he pauses to swallow air deep into his lungs' web
 
he carries us from forte to pianissimo—
holding, connecting, clipping air: the apotheosis
 
of endless minivan miles, lessons and practice.
When he bows to the standing ovation,
 
He, the orchestra, audience and I
are all breath.