Jen Kress' Counting Breaths is poetry and prose reflective of a journey across long years and her struggles to recognise her own individual self, and to hear her own voice. Within her words, you witness Kress' struggles to live her best life. As she learns to love the face in the mirror, she realises the challange is that she was truely afraid to open her eyes. This was harder yet when she could not forgive others for not seeing her for who she is. From beginning to end, she weathers the ebb and flow of her emotions and hopes to inspire others to move through their own storm and keep their eyes on the horizon. Tomorrow's sunrise will always be there to greet you.
Jen Kress' Counting Breaths is poetry and prose reflective of a journey across long years and her struggles to recognise her own individual self, and to hear her own voice. Within her words, you witness Kress' struggles to live her best life. As she learns to love the face in the mirror, she realises the challange is that she was truely afraid to open her eyes. This was harder yet when she could not forgive others for not seeing her for who she is. From beginning to end, she weathers the ebb and flow of her emotions and hopes to inspire others to move through their own storm and keep their eyes on the horizon. Tomorrow's sunrise will always be there to greet you.
Counting Breaths
I go to bed before the sun sets,
content to close my eyesÂ
before the world I no longer know
turns down the glaring lights.
All the cars still roar down the lane
and the children shout, their gamesÂ
filled with laughter, and like smoke,
it wafts into the evening sky.
One by one, the stars blink dim,
the moon tugs round his navy spread
and nods to meâ
he knows I'm counting breaths, not sheep
and shudders at the lion's growl...
You're still fast asleep.
I turn, moments tangling slow
before the sun rises, I breathe deep,
a future caught in weathered frames,
sung in a new song's hope-filled refrains.
How many more moons will there be,
trailing in a celestial wake, floatingÂ
on each next breath? I reach outÂ
and tangle my fingers in your mane...
I'm afraid to go to sleep.
Counting Breaths by Jennifer E Kress is an intimate short-line poetry and prose collection. Along with these, Kress included a piece of flash fiction broken up into three parts. This book tells of a young narrator that keeps trying, always looking toward the horizon for when the love comes back. The prose is a stained glass window into a relationship with a neglectful lover. Kress uses nature imagery of the sea and starry sky to convey these verse poems' great emptiness and turmoil. Kress speaks to the belief that sometimes the best solution is to hold on and do what you love, and things will get better. All of the pieces in this book speak to this empty loneliness and near-constant rejection the narrator is facing causing their heart to grow weary. The narrator overcomes this weariness by outlasting it.
The verse poetry in Counting Breaths is beautiful and purposeful, and the prose is incredibly intimate. All of what's found here is heart-wrenching. 1the words carry a sad patience and perseverance of someone willing to put time into self-improvement and grow stronger after repeated abuse. While the narrator's heart is weary, it is also bearing strongly. The poems that stood out the most are "Dust, and missing you" and "Praying for Time." "Dusk, and missing you" illustrates the entangling of emotion and skin that leaves one always yearning for more. The diction and punctuation stand out in this poem. Every line is written with intention and successfully conveys the poem's intended meaning. "Praying for Time" is a prose poem that stands out due to its imagery. It recalls the poet's pasts and their current feelings of newfound uselessness. The in-line rhymes and use of punctuation work well to show the narrator's frustration.
While "Praying for Time" is a work of pure artistry and feeling, overall, the prose poetry is weaker than Kress's verse poems. The poems in Counting Breaths convey feelings so strongly and darkly that the collection is very enjoyable. However, Kress is still working on their craft. While very engaging and intimate, the flash fiction embedded into this book felt more like scenes found in romance novels about toxic relationships. It was confusing, as a reader, to find such a variety of writing in one book.
That being said, the poems and prose all worked very well together. The intimacy and raw emotion found in this work were a delightful surprise. While waiting for love to return while the heart grows weary isn't a great sentiment to be endorsing the sentiments to not give up on the present and future shine through. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy romance novels, love poems, or erotic poems.