Day -60, Day -23 Day -5 Day -1 Day 1 Day 2 through 10 every day he says I love you negative days she says I love you too Day -1 her throat is almost closed Day -1 at the hospice the only word she says is yes Day -1 no IV drip no sustenance he realizes no food or water he starts to realize Page 1 is blank Page 1-10 is blisters and apology appendix is take yourself off the shelf dust yourself off and go.

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The calendar has no dates no weekends no holidays.

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He thinks in colors, he thinks crimson scarlet vermillion skies areas containments and silver breaths wires cross section and side view at the same time. He thinks shapes.

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He thinks: he thinks the other negatives, father -26 years the tumor the waste the bathrobe the gradual disappearance. Himself a child confusing radiation with radiance. Brother the other, the black smudge, -40 years, the brother he never knew, misunderstood as him, a radiant blank.

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Himself, he thinks: he can't breathe, couldn't, how childhood absorbed the 1980s, her with him in the bathroom with shower blasting scalding and furious, a family steam room to open his lungs up.

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The lungs, the bronchial, the alveoli, the indelicate impure oxygen reaching capillaries, feeding blood, the blood a moving stain, blood to the brain, the liver, the heart.

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Her, he thinks: Negative boxing matches suckerpunched wind knocked out they offer their condolences he waits at windows Day 30 he clutches the bathroom towel rack when he cries. Negative grief negative numbers negative apologies the leaves reattached to the trees silvery elegies in the form of cold sunshine but what she wanted were more rainy days.

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The five stages of grief. The sixteen stages of grief. The seven hundred stages of grief, each its own blade-flinch or silverfish Day 1 is greasy spoon Day 2 is covered in a burlap blanket Day 3 is mist Day 21 is clockwork agitation 2:30am tonight's the night wrong place wrong time. Day 26 he says he misses her. He says this every day. Day 35 feels guilty for sobbing for the wrong reasons.

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Day -185 no results and maybe all of this will go away. Day -183 Day -182 he watches her sleep he imagines himself holding her hand Day -1 they come at night to cut off her rings.

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Day -200 none of this, a little out of breath, another book to read and hour to pass, memory the draft the windows let in before death began to unspool negative days negative breathing negative intelligence.

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The alveoli: tiny balloons, a forest of them in him, his inhalers multiple they multiply they hiss he inhales as deep as non-air allows, he opens himself up every night, negative and positive days months years.

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Double lungs, not symmetrical in shape but in function, pneumonia a dark cloud in x-rays, negative year 23 phone calls to her at work, him home, gasping, he can't breathe two or three times a day, thirty seconds or a minute at a time, scares the doctors, they say lung problems, the lungs problematic, the delivery system inadequate, a family mistake, he never smokes, cold closes him, dogs close him, the alveoli collapse or drown.

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The alveoli: thousands? More? How many still in use? How many in her negative months still operational? Her breath never much of a wheeze until wet sick negative week one.

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Negative 40 years a fifteen-year-old approaching no hospice a half-brother cause of death travels through time the narrative shifts, he is discovered, their mutual father hospitalized with agony, his brother was murdered, he was a suicide, he was a story told and retold in this context, in that, a lack of air, somehow he strangled. He slipped away and disappeared and took most of his father with him.

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Loss of air the family way. Final breaths hers visible the others scenes missing.

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And now a double disappearance. He tells a doctor in positive months, if they were here they could explain, they're dead, they died of lung cancer, his doctor is interested in different labels.

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Her page 1 is blank page 10 is blank every page is blank. Space left for what she should still be here to say gifts she could give. The area of her never covered.

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Day -179 the first day of days. She says the word first. Cancer.

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Day 1 2:45am he says the words to his rushed in arrived sister he says she's gone. Day 1 and on all moved a little to the left and left askew. Some splintered some steady waves.

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Day something or other something negative small cell lung cancer smoker's cancer always lethal average life expectancy two years or less and less is count the days and speed-dial the funeral home and tidy up your last will and testament. No day 0 because every day a day, brackets around Day 1, backwards and forwards, approaching or leaving something or other. Distance no matter which way. Hours pass. Tiny gradations of loss. Scarlet and silver.

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No Day 0 no midnight hour no ground zero at home in the hospice in the broken-down hearse no groundswell only time still passing, and maybe this means memory. Maybe this means something instead of nothing. Maybe this is passing time, time passing, ugly mechanics of life being lived or left.

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Cancerous father confuses his sons, applies the wrong name, wish I could've met him, he tells her, wish I could've known my brother, wish I could've had my father explained.

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Day 31 he doesn't cry at all at first instead he goes shopping, he rereads the email she sent him Day 1 the email she sent him printed out and taped to every necessary apartment wall. The space they shared, the negative wilderness. Day 31 he worries about what comes after being numb, after sitting on your limbs wrong, after a rainy day of wrong.

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Day 31 Day 34 Day 48 he doesn't say everything will be okay “Mom,” he says without finishing the sentence.

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Lung cancer his parents' new invention in the family history, nurses ask him if he's ever smoked, he wants to laugh, growl, tell the story, here's the story: it's an overgrowth of positive negative cells, it's you, his father and his mother, her, them, organic, unnatural, the answer is no.

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Day -161 the email “Just want you to know I love you and care about you. Things will work out // Love, // Mom”

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Sometimes he touches the printed page when reading it and it presses back flat cold but a white frame of May 1st continent-size heart Day 3 Day 17 Day 24 Day 35 still wanting to tell the story, the only story, her story every story. The world subordinate to one last breath, sleep slipping, a nurse's compassionate she's gone leading to a permanent state of collision, confusion, alteration. But she's the story, not him peripheral character right-hand man. Her.

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Mom. Jeanne Marie Grider, maiden name discarded and disowned. Irish, she used to joke, by penetration. Favorite frustration proclamation “fuck shit screw.”

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The tumors hard as stones in her right pleural sac pushing into her lung tissue invading her she slowly invades herself, pleura the lining between lungs and rib cage, originally so filled with fluid they tapped her like a maple tree and withdrew 3.5 liters. She felt better when drained but tired and sharp sore from the vacuum crush. Strong as an ox, they tell her as she lies gray in bed and wants explanations and solace and says the word, says cancer, they say no then yes.

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The fluid is he doesn't know what, not blood or blood and something else translucent, something that can't be human, a scarlet placeholder for tumors the colors of which he doesn't know, thinks crimson or negative color or negative space. Nothing that could color the future, not too much.

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Every breath the last breath or one less breath until the last breath they took he takes will take will breathe to paraphrase the idiot oncologist you will breathe until you don't.

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What started during a state of shock as a griefstricken response to my mother's death from cancer has slowly become a long book about my "family history" of breath; my parents both died of lung cancer, my half-brother suffocated in an accident, and as a child I had chronic asthmatic bronchitis so all four narratives, as much or little I know about them, are intertwined.