- Choke
Over text, an old friend tells me he’s learned how to “choke a bitch” since we were last in bed.
I was drinking bourbon and ginger, much like I am now, thinking about his particular phrasing, remembering how timid he’d seemed during our encounters. Of all the phrases he could’ve used, “choke a bitch” I didn’t expect. But maybe I should have.
Of all the kinks I’ve tried since my divorce, that’s one I don’t like. He texted back, “Why not?” I thought it was about control, but a sub is supposed to relinquish power, for her own pleasure.
- Cry
As an infant, I had to learn how to breathe. Correction: I had to learn to cry and breathe at the same time. Whenever I took to wailing, the unformed epiglottis in my throat didn’t quite work. Somehow my breath caught and held fast. My face would turn purple and I’d pass out from lack of oxygen. The first time it happened, they thought I was dead. The third time, just a baby brat. At some point, I was taken to the doctor’s office and my unexpected condition soon diagnosed.
As I grew, my epiglottis grew too and corrected itself, but my reputation as a girl-child already spoiled remained.
- Count
I remember very little of losing our son at birth after an emergency c-section. But just before the hot knife, I do remember I couldn’t breathe. The intubation tube invaded my throat, and my hand curled into a claw in self-defense. The anesthesiologist said, “Count back from ten,” and for two split seconds, I wanted to kill him for smothering me, even if it meant (maybe) saving my baby.
When I woke, I had to make a decision. Groggy, I agreed to let our son return to the earth’s ether. He, too, had been intubated; his chest shocked. His heart could not beat and his lungs could not respire without machines. The doctor said, “He’s been through enough,” and I knew it for truth.
After, and for years, my breath would stall. I’d be sitting on the sofa, standing in the kitchen—not thinking of anyone or anything—and I would have to force my lungs to inhale and exhale, because breathing meant living beyond the before and into the after, where my son did not live.
- Climb
Every time I hike at elevation, I lose my breath. It’s the incline, the thin air, the baby weight I lost and gained, lost and gained, over the course of growing three children inside of my womb. Two survived, one before and one after the loss, our son an anchor of depression between them.
We never spoke of him. We always spoke of him.
We never thought of him. We always thought of him.
We never remembered him. We always remembered him.
Every year on his birthday, we went to the water—drying desert lakes, warm and cold oceans, mountain streams that only trickled in the shade of the lodgepole pine. I dreamed of drowning.
I still craved my own smothering. I still desired a bottomless depth, even as I continued to climb.
- Clitoris
Until one day, a man who had never been my husband, and never would be, put his hand to my throat and squeezed, gently but firmly. Gently but firmly, I put his hand elsewhere. My breast. My ass. My clitoris. Anywhere but my epiglottis.
Because I realized—I still had to breathe for two. That my son had survived deep inside of me, feeding on my strong breath, my thick blood. No one should stop my breath, my heart, but him.
END
Court Harler (she/her) is a queer freelance writer, editor, and educator based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She holds an MFA from University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe (2017) and an MA from Eastern Washington University (2013). Courtney is currently editor in chief of CRAFT Literary Magazine and editorial director for Discover New Art, and has read and/or written for UNT Press’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize, The Masters Review, Funicular Magazine, Reflex Fiction, and Chicago Literati in recent years. She also hosts the literary podcast PWN’s Debut Review, as well as instructs and edits for Project Write Now. For her creative work, Courtney has been honored by fellowships and/or grants from Key West Literary Seminar, Writing By Writers, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Nevada Arts Council. Courtney’s work has been published in multiple genres in literary magazines around the world. Links to her publications and other related awards can be found at https://harlerliterary.llc. Find her on Instagram @CourtneyHarler.
