I like your wings, she had once told me, decayed and withered away. Standing here on tainted soil--it’s okay. I’m acquitted to this ramshackle life, the everyday imperfections. The heart palpitations in the evenings and shortness of breath. The condemned, it drives me forward. I am breathing that same O2 mixture entrapped within every pair of lungs connected to a beating, steady heart. Its air, respired and unfiltered through steady unyielding breaths. Those plastic breathing tubes—they choke and stifle you in the end. Their hospital Johnnies are drafty—failing to endow your purpled heart, Lavender varicose veins. A calloused, brooding soul. Show me the real sky, Jeff Cole. It’s not through infirmary windows or screened between the fragile glass panes and mesh.