I’d like to extend a token
of my warmest gratitude
to my rescue inhaler,
my pocket-sized knight cloaked
in red and white plastic armor,
as I am its damsel in respiratory distress.
My knight, Sir ProAir RespiClick,
is errant only because I am.
Its years-long quest? To follow me.
From 1st grade gym class all the way
to quarter-life crisis journeys abroad,
it’s waited patiently until called upon
by the fire in my lungs and a deep rumbling
in the caverns of my chest - signs that the dragon
living there has risen from slumber once again,
and must be coaxed back to sleep
since it stubbornly refuses to be slain.
Sir RespiClick readily answers the call with
a yawn-click-and-a-puff in a sudden burst
of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,
each one part of a never-ending
quest to save me from my own airways,
tightened by genetics and angered
by illness or exercise.
In the meter on its back, I watch
the number of lives my knight has left to give
dwindle with each breath it nobly extends to me.
It breathes out so that I may breathe in.
And they say chivalry is dead.