Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

Host: The morning light spilled through the studio window like a gentle awakening — a slow river of gold dust filtering through the quiet. The room was filled with the faint scent of paper, paint, and ink, the sacred clutter of a creator’s life. Sketches, manuscripts, and half-written poems covered the desk like fallen leaves of memory.

Outside, the city was beginning its day — distant voices, a rolling trolley, the soft hum of life rising from below. Inside, time moved differently. It breathed.

Jack stood by the open window, shirt sleeves rolled up, his grey eyes fixed on the horizon as if trying to measure its silence. Jeeny sat cross-legged on the floor, a notebook open on her lap, her pen hovering, her lips moving soundlessly — tasting words before they were born.

The quote had come up like a sigh in conversation.
"Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry." — Muriel Rukeyser.

Now it hung between them, tender and infinite.

Jeeny: “It’s the most beautiful instruction, isn’t it? Like living itself is the poem — we just forget to exhale it.”

Jack: “Or maybe we over-romanticize it. Not everything we breathe in deserves to become art. Some experiences should stay buried.”

Host: A soft breeze moved through the window, stirring the loose papers on the desk, making them flutter like restless wings. Jeeny’s hair lifted slightly, framing her face in light.

Jeeny: “But that’s exactly what she meant, Jack. The ugly, the painful, the mundane — they all have music in them. You just have to listen close enough to hear it.”

Jack: “You really think pain deserves poetry?”

Jeeny: “Pain needs poetry. Otherwise it just festers.”

Host: Jack turned from the window, his voice low, his tone practical, but his eyes tired, holding years that poetry could only circle, never reach.

Jack: “You talk like words are medicine.”

Jeeny: “Sometimes they are.”

Jack: “No. They’re distraction. They make us feel like we’ve done something when all we’ve done is describe it.”

Jeeny: “Maybe description is action. You think silence saves anyone?”

Host: A moment passed — the kind that feels like the world inhaling before it dares to speak again. Jack picked up a piece of paper, folded it once, then twice, as if giving form to what he couldn’t say.

Jack: “When I was young, I used to write. I’d sit on rooftops and write about things I thought I understood — love, death, loneliness. Now I see I was just romanticizing confusion.”

Jeeny: “That’s still poetry, Jack. Confusion written honestly is truth in disguise.”

Jack: “No. It’s indulgence.”

Jeeny: “So what is truth then? The way you swallow your hurt and pretend it’s gone?”

Host: Her voice sharpened, a flash of fire beneath her calm. The sound of a distant church bell rolled through the open air — solemn, echoing.

Jack: “Truth is what’s left after you’ve stopped lying to yourself with beauty.”

Jeeny: “And what if beauty is the only way to bear the truth?”

Host: The light shifted, catching in the dust like small galaxies suspended midair. Both of them were still now, caught between conviction and memory.

Jeeny: “When Rukeyser said that, she wasn’t talking about luxury. She was talking about survival. She lived through war, repression, injustice — and yet she said to breathe it in, not to choke on it. She believed that the act of creating was resistance.”

Jack: “Resistance to what?”

Jeeny: “To numbness. To despair. To forgetting.”

Host: The rain began — soft and sudden. A thin mist pressed against the glass, distorting the world into watercolor. Jeeny lifted her hand, catching a few raindrops that had slipped through the open window.

Jeeny: “You see? Even this. The rain doesn’t mean anything by itself. But the moment I feel it, it becomes a story. I breathe it in — the sound, the smell, the way it lands — and it changes me. That’s poetry.”

Jack: “That’s sentiment.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. That’s awareness. The kind you’ve forgotten.”

Host: He looked at her, the edges of his expression softening, not from agreement, but from recognition — the way a man remembers once knowing how to feel.

Jack: “So you think every experience is a verse waiting to happen.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Even silence.”

Jack: “Then what do you do with the moments that break you?”

Jeeny: “You breathe them in — completely. You let them hollow you out, then you exhale what’s left. That’s the poem. Not escape. Transformation.”

Host: Lightning flashed in the distance — not violent, but solemn, like a heartbeat flashing across the sky. The sound reached them late, like the echo of their own conversation.

Jack: “And what if you breathe in too much? What if experience drowns you before you can turn it into words?”

Jeeny: “Then you still write. Because drowning has its own rhythm. Because every gasp is a line break.”

Host: The rain grew heavier, its music deepening, almost orchestral. Jack sat beside her now, elbows on his knees, watching as she scribbled something in her notebook.

Jack: “You make it sound easy. Like art’s just breathing.”

Jeeny: “It is. It’s just that most people forget how to breathe deeply.”

Jack: “And you think poetry fixes that?”

Jeeny: “No. It just reminds us we’re alive.”

Host: The clock ticked quietly, unbothered by philosophy. Jeeny handed him her notebook, the ink still wet, words trembling slightly from her unsteady hand.

Jack looked down.
The line was short, raw, imperfect —
‘To breathe is to remember that pain is proof of life.’

He didn’t speak. Just looked at the words until they blurred, his own reflection swimming faintly in the ink.

Jeeny: “You see, Jack? That’s it. That’s all Rukeyser meant. We breathe in what the world gives us — cruelty, kindness, confusion — and if we’re brave enough, we exhale something that carries the shape of who we are.”

Jack: “And if we’re not brave?”

Jeeny: “Then we choke.”

Host: The rainlight softened again, the kind of dimness that feels protective rather than mournful. The storm was quieting; the city was clearer now.

Jack closed the notebook gently, like a fragile confession. His voice dropped to a whisper.

Jack: “Maybe that’s why I stopped writing. I ran out of breath.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s time to inhale again.”

Host: For a long while, neither spoke. The room breathed for them — the faint hum of the radiator, the ticking of rain on glass, the whisper of paper as a draft turned the pages of some old script.

Jeeny: “Do you feel it?” she asked softly.

Jack: “What?”

Jeeny: “The world — breathing with you.”

Host: He looked up, out the window. The rain had eased to a shimmer. The city’s lights reflected in the puddles below, trembling but steady. He inhaled deeply — the scent of wet earth, ink, and warmth.

Jack: “Yeah… I do.”

Jeeny smiled, not triumphantly, but like someone who had just watched a wound close.

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s your first line.”

Host: The morning stretched its arms across the sky, peeling back the last of the clouds. The light that entered the room was soft and forgiving. Jack reached for a pen. The world, for once, seemed to pause — listening.

And in that stillness, they both began to breathe —
in experience,
out poetry.