“We’re alive and here, but we died, too.” RC, Person with Long COVID, April 14, 2022
Falling from the sky through the blue,
shrinking, or is the sky growing?
But the sky can’t grow, already
it is forever. Falling from
blue into treetops, into leaves,
as if atoms of awareness,
atoms with wide amazing eyes.
Falling through leaves, through air between
leaves, through light, through the trust of air,
falling through the cracks, through the thought
of breathing (as if breathing is
a memory). Somewhere there must
be a stopping point, an end. Breath.
Breathe. Fall. Let the chest fall. Exhale.
Inhale. The air does and does not
move itself. The air is hungry.
The body is hungry for air.
It is a kind of love affair,
the way the body and the air
both lunge and leap, both rise and fall,
grasping at each other as if
this is the true purpose of life,
narrowing to a pinpoint like
vision, like a trajectory,
the point where falling stops and then
eyes open, look up through the leaves
to that blue at the beginning.
Rosefire Rising 
Nice comparing falling to breathing difficulties. It does seem true that once you stop coughing you can feel at peace until the uncontrollable coughing starts again.
I hadn’t thought of that at all, but also very true and an entirely appropriate reading of the text!