I saw this thing on TV, right. It was about light and the colours we see and the colours we don’t see. Like there’s a whole other world that just aint visible to us. And there was shit in it about invisible light passing through us and passing through everything and it was like we wasn’t made of nothing much at all. Jesus, that freaked me out. And then it got me to thinking.
Breathe.
Take the front room when there’s no one in it. An empty room, right? ‘Cept if there’s colours we don’t see then there just might be a whole lot else that’s invisible, too.
My mam, she gave birth to me in that room, see. They’d set up a bed there so she didn’t have to climb the breathless stairs each night. The midwife came and her name was Barbara. She kept sending my da off to boil water for no other reason than he was a bloody nuisance with his fretting and his asking if we was there yet. And if I close my eyes I can see it all, the yellow-lit room and Barbara with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and reminding my mam to breathe, and a watch pinned upside down on the midwife’s breast bib and it was seven minutes after midnight. Mam told the story often enough I can see it right down to the smallest detail, and I can hear my da knock-knocking like a heartbeat at the room door like it wasn’t his house no more.
Breathe.
And there was a girl once, and her name was Jenny and she had the bluest eyes – so blue I miss ‘em even now – and we was sitting on the settee in the near dark and all Jenny’s words was breath and whisper and she said I wasn’t to tell no one, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. She had one hand down the front of my jeans and she was holding my hard cock in her hand and not holding it still. It was my first time and she kept telling me to breathe, like it was something I’d forgotten how to do. And she laughed when I came.
Breathe.
And my da passed away, sitting in the chair by the fire – his chair. He just looked like he was sleeping, same as he always was by that time. ‘Cept he wasn’t breathing and I didn’t notice at first. I brought him a cup of tea, the way he liked it – milk and two sugars and you have to pour the milk in first, top of the milk’s best. And a plate of digestive biscuits, I brought too. And I said ‘There you go, da,’ and I said it loud enough to call him out of sleep, but it wasn’t sleep.
Breathe.
And it’s an empty room, right? Only maybe empty is all we see, like the rainbow colours but they ain’t the only colours there is. And all of life might be in that room, all the little pieces, smaller than dust, and light passing through – dark light, and we just don’t see it. And it aint easy thinking about it and maybe it takes your breath away and stops heartbeats.
Patricia Ann McNair 
I saw this thing on TV, right. It was about light and the colours we see and the colours we don’t see. Like there’s a whole other world that just aint visible to us. And there was shit in it about invisible light passing through us and passing through everything and it was like we wasn’t made of nothing much at all. Jesus, that freaked me out. And then it got me to thinking.
Breathe.
Take the front room when there’s no one in it. An empty room, right? ‘Cept if there’s colours we don’t see then there just might be a whole lot else that’s invisible, too.
My mam, she gave birth to me in that room, see. They’d set up a bed there so she didn’t have to climb the breathless stairs each night. The midwife came and her name was Barbara. She kept sending my da off to boil water for no other reason than he was a bloody nuisance with his fretting and his asking if we was there yet. And if I close my eyes I can see it all, the yellow-lit room and Barbara with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and reminding my mam to breathe, and a watch pinned upside down on the midwife’s breast bib and it was seven minutes after midnight. Mam told the story often enough I can see it right down to the smallest detail, and I can hear my da knock-knocking like a heartbeat at the room door like it wasn’t his house no more.
Breathe.
And there was a girl once, and her name was Jenny and she had the bluest eyes – so blue I miss ‘em even now – and we was sitting on the settee in the near dark and all Jenny’s words was breath and whisper and she said I wasn’t to tell no one, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. She had one hand down the front of my jeans and she was holding my hard cock in her hand and not holding it still. It was my first time and she kept telling me to breathe, like it was something I’d forgotten how to do. And she laughed when I came.
Breathe.
And my da passed away, sitting in the chair by the fire – his chair. He just looked like he was sleeping, same as he always was by that time. ‘Cept he wasn’t breathing and I didn’t notice at first. I brought him a cup of tea, the way he liked it – milk and two sugars and you have to pour the milk in first, top of the milk’s best. And a plate of digestive biscuits, I brought too. And I said ‘There you go, da,’ and I said it loud enough to call him out of sleep, but it wasn’t sleep.
Breathe.
And it’s an empty room, right? Only maybe empty is all we see, like the rainbow colours but they ain’t the only colours there is. And all of life might be in that room, all the little pieces, smaller than dust, and light passing through – dark light, and we just don’t see it. And it aint easy thinking about it and maybe it takes your breath away and stops heartbeats.