In the narrow morning, she listens for his breath beside her. It’s a tiny thing, like a small stone dropped in
a dark lake—shallow, uneven. His face is turned to the wall, close to where the paint flakes. There’s barely
room between them, barely room for the two, barely room to breathe without stealing from the other. She
feels his exhale as she inhales, and it’s like they’re passing something unseen back and forth.
 

She fidgets with her breathing tubes; since when did she get used to it, she can’t remember. She can feel
them beside her, tickling back and forth as they remind her of their intimacy, the intimacy of sharing the
same air. Almost every day, she sets them aside for a few seconds, holds her breath, and listens to the
sound from the hall. There is no sound. Yet she imagines the rows of beds, spreading endlessly across, one
by one, each person close as lips to skin. One room over, she imagines a family of three, and next door,
she remembers, a man so old his breath turns into whispers before reaching the machine. There’s barely
enough for everyone. And yet, at night, stories and voices escape out of each unit to fill up the tiny spaces
that were left.
 

If you ever feel cold, stop breathing, and you’ll hear everyone’s breath lingering just long enough to send
a rush of heat through your body, as if telling you, you cannot die. She can’t tell if the air between them is
warm or if it’s only memory, holding on to what they can’t afford to lose. It’s been so long that she's
forgotten when they started to ration heat, trade air for breathing. She remembers how the man at the end
of the hall is always trying to sell her some, always whispering he can “keep the chill off.” She’s never
taken him up on it. She’s afraid of what might happen if she warms too close to someone else’s breath,
afraid she’d lose track of whose air she’s breathing.
 

Every morning at eight, she sees the mirror. It’s rusted at the corners. It’s small, no bigger than her hand,
and only allowed to stay because she kept it from before, back when walls had space and air was free.
Every morning, she touches it as if touching a face, wiping the dust away, marking where the metal turns
back to dust. She tries to catch herself in its glass, but it only reflects part of her—a nose, one eye, a small
slant of cheek, and her whirling chain of thought. She feels torn apart, and as she picks up each of her
pieces scattered, frustrated to find it too narrow to fit her whole.
 

She doesn’t see herself all at once anymore. This doesn’t bother her until she tries to remember what she
used to look like—before the building, before the stale walls. The man on the radio says they’re solving it,
this issue of "housing" and "space," that they’re working on “breathing solutions,” “next-generation
ventilation,” “air share.” To look on the bright side, they say, we would be able to be part of each other,
and to appreciate the intimacy in air sharing. Her husband scoffs at the announcements, but she doesn’t
laugh; she only nods as if she understands, as if breathing in place of someone else makes any sense at all.
 

In the afternoon, she would unplug her breathing tube and plug it into the vent. The air there was a
cocktail of old breath and the faint scent of metal, damp with voices she didn't recognize. She used to love
scents: flowers blooming at twilight, her mother’s kitchen on winter mornings, the way bread would rise
in the dark oven. But here, she can’t pick apart the smells; they blur, like fog sinking into skin, until she

doesn’t know if it’s something she’s tasting or dreaming. Once, when the air grew too thick, she’d close
her eyes and pretend she was somewhere vast. A field stretching forever. She’d picture the grass brushing
her ankles, the smell of clean earth. But when she’d open her eyes again, there were the walls, so close she
could feel the paint pulling her back, the ceiling hanging above like a second sky. She doesn’t try
anymore.
 

Every night, they whisper. Sometimes it’s things they wish they could remember, other times things
they’re afraid they’ve forgotten. They tell stories, close to each other’s faces, words tumbling out in short
breaths. He tells her about the park he once saw, birds chirping on trees. She tells him about the ocean,
water splashing onto the beach, though she’s never been there herself. And together, they make up a kind
of place neither of them has seen, wide and open, where the wind can lift a voice and carry it for miles...
 

One night, she wakes with a start, her breath caught in her chest. There’s a strange stillness in the air, a
feeling like absence. She touches her husband’s shoulder, but he doesn’t stir. She presses her ear to his
mouth, waiting for that small sound, that familiar rhythm, a sign of something alive. There’s nothing, only
the silence, thick and strange, settling around her like a shroud. She doesn’t cry. She waits, as if he’ll turn
back, as if he’s just gone somewhere for a moment. Hours pass in the dark, her breath comes in little
gasps, sharp and quick, and for the first time, she realizes how loud a single breath can be.
 

It wasn’t until a few days later that his body was collected.
 

She slides over to where he sleeps, touches the walls, and feels the memory of his touch, his warmth,
creeping in. The air had grown thicker, but she didn’t reach for the man’s air. She kept it there. She wraps
her arms around herself and lets the chill sink in, letting it burrow deep. For the first time, she thinks she
understands the radio—the comfort of small spaces, the intimacy of shared air, the way a life can become
a part of something larger, until it’s no longer just hers, but theirs. And when she closes her eyes, she can
almost feel it—the vastness she once dreamed of, stretching out beyond the walls...