I sigh all the time

my mother points this out

what feels like every time we are together

she does it too

she tells me that her mother was sigher

it must run in the family

I sigh through clenched jaws

at raised voices

marching orders

slamming doors

a methodical numbing

to mounting tension

I sigh through gnawed cuticles

closed lips

silence

shaking my head

nothing’s wrong

only everything was

but the sigh that erupted from me

from the news that knocked out my wind

until I had to catch my breath

or I would die from forgetting to breathe

was the news of my worst fear

that I couldn’t have fathomed

It pushed me into and out of the instant

like watching a movie of someone else’s life

when I was thirteen years old

when my foundation fell out from under me

when I saw the camo duffel bag in the trunk of my mother’s car

and she told me we were going to the hospital

to visit your father

and time slowed

and then it stopped

and just like that

what I trusted was gone

my sigh was my body’s search

grasping at air

gasping for air

pumping strength into the moment

shifting the weight

and readying the forward march

so I let out my sighs one at a time

and put one foot in front of the other

as my mother did

and as her mother did

knowing that no matter what,

it is what I would have to do too

the strength of their sighs are in me

through secrets

and wars and sickness

their sighs are mine too

filling my heart

with resilience and resolve

and so I climbed into bed with my mother each night

that my father was gone from us

so she would not have to sleep alone

synchronizing our sighs

while we waited for him

to come home