Every exhale is counted, weighed, and sold to someone who doesn’t live here—
someone who has never woken to the rattle of dawn
shaking the dust from its pockets
like a tired god clocking in for another shift.
In this town, breath is a currency.
The children trade theirs for recess,
the elders for a quiet afternoon without coughing up
another gray feather of the sky’s exhaustion.
We are paid in particulate promises:
tiny specks of maybe, someday, almost.
The smokestacks rise like stern foremen,
tall as verdicts delivered without trial.
They do not blink.
They do not bargain.
They take their tithe of oxygen
and leave our chests echoing like half-collapsed warehouses.
Still, we show up.
We shoulder the sun.
We lift the morning until it glows faintly,
a lantern swaying above the picket line of our ribs.
Some nights, a breeze sneaks in—
an outlaw wind slipping between the factories
with news from somewhere greener.
It whispers: breathe deeper,
your lungs are not a ledger.
And we try—
inhalation as rebellion,
exhalation as prayer—
each breath a small strike
against the empire of smoke
that believes it owns us.