Hack Attack

Each hack breaks my will, my joy, all my best,
Lost wind tears breath from my struggling breast;
It pulls at my eyes, that can no longer tear,
And my ears hear my fears soaring swiftly near.
Raw, rasping rattles of strained, painful breaths,
Offering lung tissues solitary deaths
As they flicker and fade with each exhalation:
Curious carnage of forced expiration.
Flecks of the conquered, as expulsed issue,
Collects on the soft, white breast of a tissue.

Comes a pause, and with it a sudden hope,
That the long strangulation has run out of rope.
Hope that is dashed once again, as if willed
By a demon, the storm clouds gather and build.
Lightning soon strikes an elusive trigger.
With each round, the storm’s force grows bigger and bigger,
Till the trigger, obliterated at last,
Signals the storm has finally passed.

Mick McKellar
March 2021

Someone asked me to describe the experience of a bronchiolitis obliterans coughing attack.

Mick