Coming Soon
By Dolan Morgan
“COMING SOON: breathable guitar” “COMING SOON: breathable book” “COMING SOON: breathable friendship” “COMING SOON: breathable feeling of making it from one end of the day to the other without getting lost in the sea” “COMING SOON: breathable zoom meeting” “COMING SOON: breathable stocks” “COMING SOON: breathable sense of hopeful anticipation for what is next” “COMING SOON: breathable past” “COMING SOON: breathable past that doesn't make you feel sick” “COMING SOON: breathable personal narrative that you can believe in and say aloud without reservation” “COMING SOON: breathable taxes” “COMING SOON: breathable calendar invite” “COMING SOON: breathable air” “COMING SOON: breathable family” “COMING SOON: breathable emergency” “COMING SOON: breathable text from a loved one about a diagnosis of terminal illness” “COMING SOON: breathable keep working anyway” “COMING SOON: breathable frantic phone calls that you just can't answer” “COMING SOON: breathable not now not now not now” “COMING SOON: breathable song that makes you cry while washing the dishes” “COMING SOON: breathable decaf” “COMING SOON: breathable someone I love is hurting, is so unwell, and all I can do is buy them scarves which feels ridiculous, buying scarves in the face of death, and maybe I can find the longest one in the world or the shortest or” “COMING SOON: breathable scarves” “COMING SOON: breathable hands” “COMING SOON: breathable talk with my mom about the mortality of her daughter” “COMING SOON: breathable saying 'her daughter' instead of 'my sister' and sitting with that recognition” “COMING SOON: breathable sense of agency” “COMING SOON: breathable birds that watch me making breakfast in the morning” “COMING SOON: breathable more time” “COMING SOON: breathable request for just a little bit longer” “COMING SOON: breathable collection of takeout menus you keep but will never use or read, an archive a museum a monument of menus” “COMING SOON: breathable failure to speak clearly about what matters” “COMING SOON: breathable choking feeling” “COMING SOON: breathable tree outside my window” “COMING SOON: breathable wondering why we lost touch” “COMING SOON: breathable distance” “COMING SOON: breathable years” “COMING SOON: breathable apology” “COMING SOON: breathable river” “COMING SOON: breathable wondering who is allowed to feel grief about another's suffering, and how much” “COMING SOON: breathable yard stick” “COMING SOON: breathable light” “COMING SOON: breathable mourning ritual” “COMING SOON: breathable sense of estrangement from the parts of yourself that someone else still fondly carries with them” “COMING SOON: breathable brand new phone” “COMING SOON: breathable acculturation to the shifting ratio of consumption to production in any given day” “COMING SOON: breathable tik tok” “COMING SOON: breathable precarity” “COMING SOON: breathable guilt upon observing and admiring the narrative arc of a loved one's pain” “COMING SOON: breathable unfair projection of climax and resolution” “COMING SOON: breathable laughter at how alien and surreal mortality can feel when it arrives and asserts itself, how unfamiliar and strange, despite death being tied for first place among the most common features of any life” “COMING SOON: breathable faith in the ultimate flatness of every narrative arc when set against a long enough timeline” “COMING SOON: breathable vocal harmony floating over a steady bass line” “COMING SOON: breathable uncertainty regarding the arrival of a song's bridge and wondering which of the two elements will persist alone across the breakdown (and which will fall away): the harmony above or the line beneath” “COMING SOON: breathable pause” “COMING SOON: breathable rewind” “COMING SOON: breathable inevitable return of the musical refrain” “COMING SOON: breathable chemo, then radiation, then a pill for the rest of her life” “COMING SOON: breathable unraveling of the phrase 'the rest of my life' when she says it in this context” “COMING SOON: breathable rest” “COMING SOON: breathable wound vac procedure” “COMING SOON: breathable exhalation” “COMING SOON: breathable misinterpretation of the term 'wound vac,' images of a tube efficiently and cleanly pulling wounds away from a body and a life, like lint from a carpet” “COMING SOON: breathable lying on the floor, running a palm across the threads of a carpet” “COMING SOON: breathable habit” “COMING SOON: breathable checking off the last item in a to-do list” “COMING SOON: breathable sense of simultaneous pride and deflation regarding the pure satisfaction that completing a mundane checklist now affords” “COMING SOON: breathable dentist appointment” “COMING SOON: breathable awe and sadness at how much of her life my sister has faced alone, with next to nothing, and sense of conflict regarding whether or not that fact renders her better or more ill equipped to endure the coming indignities of her medical treatment” “COMING SOON: breathable persistence of narrative illusion” “COMING SOON: breathable idea of narrative as an ancient living creature with us as its host” “COMING SOON: breathable vision of narrative metastasizing around our lives and in our bodies, multiplying unabated” “COMING SOON: breathable absurdity of narrative's irreconcilability with actual experience and how that very same discontinuity itself seeks obscenely to become a narrative” “COMING SOON: breathable continuation of the story after you think it should end” “COMING SOON: breathable halting of the story when you demand it should continue” “COMING SOON: breathable is this love” “COMING SOON: breathable meaning of love when held between two family members who barely speak” “COMING SOON: breathable glances between passengers on a train” “COMING SOON: breathable arrival at the station together” “COMING SOON: breathable carrying each other’s bags for a while” “COMING SOON: breathable exchange of silences and smiles before getting into separate cars” “COMING SOON: breathable feeling of acceleration” “COMING SOON: breathable faster” “COMING SOON: breathable and faster”