What is worth This Next Breath

What is worth this next breath?

I ask it before the sun climbs the blinds, before the coffee cools, before memory has the chance to rewrite anything into something kinder than it was. I ask it with the stubborn calm of someone who has counted change at gas stations and decided to keep going anyway. I ask it with a tongue that have tasted panic and dust and courtroom air. I ask it because I have learned that a question can keep a person upright when the ground feels like rumor.

What is worth this next breath?

I was taught early that life does not come everyday as a gift. It comes as a tally of moments that don’t forgive you if you flinch. I learned to tighten my laces and step forward when everything argued for sitting still. Bill collectors, offices, the foul air of humiliation. Friends who swore loyalty, then vanished. A door that slammed behind me with a finality I can still hear. I stood outside with a box full of the kind of objects a person collects when he thought he would never need to start over. I looked up at a sky too calm for what I felt and made an oath that no one would grade but me.

What is worth this next breath?

Stubbornness is the first answer. The kind that keeps your feet on the floor when everyone is already digging your grave. I could list mine. The week nothing worked and I still sent one message, then another, then a hundred more. The days I walked straight to the desk and didn’t quit until the day stopped fighting. The night I sat with grief until it stopped shouting and started to sing. The moment I chose water over something else and walked a circuit around the block, hands open, until the urge ran out of arguments. They are not trophies. They are reasons.

The reasons change. The vow remains. I am still here.

What is worth this next breath?

The choice itself. We speak of destiny as if it is an offramp. An arrival. I have met it as a series of small switches. Each one asks for a finger to flick it into life. Choice settles like a rock in my shoe. I have walked with that pain and kept going. That is my religion. That is my rebellion. I will keep choosing even when choosing feels like dragging a frozen net through black water. I am the animal that refuses to sink, the one who bites the line and pulls.

What is worth this next breath?

Odds. The ridiculous arithmetic of survival. The improbable victory a body manages just by standing up again. I have gambled against statistics and won by inches. I have celebrated a day in tiny flags planted on barren ground. Make the call. Send the draft. Clean the room. Take the walk. Feed the mind. Tell the truth to one person, even if that person is the myself, in the mirror. Celebrate like a fool for five seconds, then ask the question again and keep moving.

What is worth this next breath?

The work. Mine. The stubborn, unglamorous craft of making meaning without sponsorship. I write like a man hauling a rope. I search for one line that feels carved from something alive, then I fight for a second. I do it in the face of the world’s laughter and the algorithm’s indifference. I do it when a sentence flies, and I do it when a sentence limps. I do it because language is a set of keys I keep in my pocket, and I refuse to let the lock win. I do it because the day needs fire, and I have flint.

What is worth this next breath?

The people. The few who stayed. The child who once leaned into my side at a stoplight and asked if the world was a scary as I acted. The neighbor who slid a casserole across the threshold without eye contact because kindness can be a little shy. The stranger who wrote three words that kept me from falling through into hell. The old friend who called when he did not have the right words and gave me the sound of another life breathing on the line. I do not believe in guardian anything, but I believe in hands. I have felt them catch me.

What is worth this next breath?

The body, flawed and miraculous. The drum in the chest that refuses stillness, the rhythm that pushes blood toward possibility. I have cursed this vessel for its limits and then forgiven it for its stubborn courage. I have watched it heal from what should have killed it. These lungs have filled with smoke and laughter and hospital air, and they still rise like two old workers showing up for another shift. I owe them gratitude. I pay in oxygen and discipline.

What is worth this next breath?

The past, because it can be repurposed. I raid my own history for lumber. I build bridges from the boards of failed attempts. I lay floors from the planks of abandonment. I nail together a table from the scraps of my mistakes and invite the future to sit. If the room echoes, I speak louder. If the walls feel thin, I sing until they thicken. The past is dead. I use it for parts.

What is worth this next breath?

The anger that refuses cruelty. The flintlike insistence that life has value independent of profit. The vow to protect the small things that keep a soul aligned. Morning walks. Honest sweat. Good food. A story that tells the truth without turning it into theater. The relief of speaking shame and watching it lose power. The discovery that simplicity is not surrender, it is steel.

What is worth this next breath?

The future, unpromised, unscripted, untamed. I want to live long enough to watch something grow that once only existed as a sketch in a notebook. I want to witness the day when a person I love believes in themselves more than they believe in gravity. I want to laugh at jokes we haven’t written yet. I want to carry boxes for someone moving into their first place. I want to sit at a table where nobody has to earn the right to be there. I want to show up when showing up is the whole point.

What is worth this next breath?

The fight with despair. I respect it as an opponent because it knows my softness and my quiet retreats. It waits for a storm. It whispers about relief. I answer by pouring a glass of water and calling a friend. I answer by stepping into rain and letting it bathe my face. I answer by touching a book that once saved me and remembering I did not invent courage, I joined a line of people who practiced it. I answer by working until the whisper grows bored and leaves me alone.

What is worth this next breath?

Faith without theater. Faith as a verb, as calloused hands, as a idea scrawled on a scrap of paper. Faith that the long path rewards tenderness and grit. Faith that there is a hidden light in everything, even if you have to mine through a mountain to find it. Faith that today is a blade that can cut bondage and carve a channel for water. Faith that this moment can become special if I place it upon a throne.

What is worth this next breath?

The yes I owe myself. The one no sermon can deliver. The yes that sounds like a door opening inside. The yes that tastes like victory. The yes that refuses to wait for blessing. I say yes to the work, yes to the day, yes to the scar, yes to the person I am building with sweat and sentences. I say yes to the quiet. I say yes to the thunder. I say yes to the truth that this life will not hand me a script, and I do not need one.

What is worth this next breath?

This. The act of choosing again. The audacity of not disappearing. The promise I make without witnesses, then keep in full view. The knowledge that someone somewhere is asking the same question with their back against a wall. If you can hear me, I am speaking to you. If you cannot hear me, I am still speaking to you. Stand. Let the lungs rise. Let the hands find something worth lifting. Let your feet learn a new path. Call forward the person you always suspected you could become.

I do not ask for ease. I ask for clarity. I ask for the chance to stay honest in a world that rewards theater. I ask for the strength to become exactly what I keep promising when nobody is looking. I ask for the stamina to love righteously. I ask for the courage to forgive without losing self-respect. I ask for the kind of patience that plants trees whose shade I may never sit under, and the urgent joy that dances in that fact.

So I ask one more time, as a drumbeat, a summons, a vow I renew with open eyes.

What is worth this next breath?

Everything I am still willing to build. Everything I refuse to abandon. Everyone who ever reached for me when I had nothing to offer back. The vision that keeps pacing the room, waiting for me to stop doubting and begin. The road that will teach me by scraping my knees and filling my pockets. The love I will give without measuring return. The work that will outlive me if I do it right. The simple miracle of standing up when lying down would be easier.

What is worth this next breath?

I am.

And I intend to spend it.