My new Purple Air monitor surveils pollution.
I bought it so I’d know when it’s safe to breathe.
Wildfire smoke walks daily across our continent—
I wish I could live somewhere that’s good to breathe.
I populate the house with an array of air purifiers
that should make indoors pleasant to breathe,
but nothing is simple. Mice keep dying in the walls:
the rooms are tainted with their last attempt to breathe.
Sometimes it rains. Mold blooms suffocate
the atmosphere just when I think I’ll try to breathe.
And now it’s ragweed season until the first frost.
Maybe in November it will be okay to breathe.
Fifty years ago I wondered why I felt so weak—
I had no idea that I couldn’t breathe.
Secondhand smoke, coal dust, smog: all conspired
against the girl who only wanted to breathe
so she could run away from her childhood.
The irony is that the future is dangerous to breathe.
The world is warmer and I’m old. Our air dons a shroud
of PM2.5 and microplastics—always bad to breathe.
This new monitor can only tell me what is.
I know it will never be safe to breathe.
