Only Breath
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or in the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.
Only Breath - meaning Summary
Beyond All Fixed Identities
The speaker rejects religious labels, cultural identities, physical origins, and even the ordinary distinction between body and soul. In their place, the poem presents a mystical identity grounded in union with the Beloved, a Sufi name for the divine. The apparent opposites of this world and the next, inner and outer, first and last, are understood as aspects of one reality sustained by a single sacred breath.
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