Breathless, a text about suffocating relationships, was written for a set of wrinkled skin-like papers, that I put aside because it included the phrase ‘I can’t breathe’ and that felt untouchable after Eric Garner’s murder by police in Staten Island, 2014.

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In April 2020, our pandemic lives gave it new meaning and resonance so I resumed working on the book, writing, erasing and altering the text, and finally completing the copies, May 20, 2020. Or so I thought: with George Floyd’s murder on May 25th, again, that phrase held impossible trauma & burden. On May 29th I wrote and printed the colophon, asking myself “should I erase those words? --Breathing not breathing.”

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In the year since Floyd’s death, I again re-worked the book with new imagery and words. I am still unsure. The text is presented as a manuscript or meditation in 2 languages, an echo and a violation that has been written like tattoos on these skin-like papers.