Breathing and Peace

by LaFarra R. Hemphill October 3, 2024October 3, 2024

There's no paywall here

Apologies for the brief interruption. We hope you’re finding these fact-based, community-focused updates from our team valuable.

You won’t find a paywall at Planet Detroit—because we believe access to trustworthy, local journalism is essential for an informed, engaged community.

As disinformation spreads and local newsrooms shrink, independent reporting on climate, health, and equity has never been more important. Thanks to reader support, we keep our journalism free and accessible to all.

Before you get back to reading, we’d be grateful if you took half a minute to support our work. Every contribution helps. Thank you.

$10/month

$100/year

OTHER>>

SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE EMAIL NEWSLETTERS:

To have a breath of fresh air is laughable
To breathe and have it turn into asthma,
turn into COPD then turn into lung cancer
is reality for me
There is no peace of self, family nor community, if there is no fresh air
The fresh air where I breathe it in and my whole body say ahh
Fresh air where I can walk, run, jog, sit, lay with a cough, grasp of air or sneeze
I am fearful I will will never get that fresh air
My family, my future family nor I will never have that ahh fresh air
It is a human right for breathing and peace

Planet Detroit and Book Suey partnered to curate and publish climate poems from our community. Read the rest of the poems here.

Sign me up for Planet Detroit’s free weekly email newsletter

Give us your email, and we’ll give you our award-winning free weekly email newsletter on Fridays

Tagged: poetry

LaFarra R. Hemphill

I love serving my community. My foundation is helping individuals who need acute mental health care. Connecting with those who are underprivileged, invisible to the majority and devalued has motivated me to explore writing as a voice for them and myself.

More by LaFarra R. Hemphill

Sign up for free weekly email updates

Support independent journalism

Donate now

Planet Detroit is the only newsroom in the state focusing on climate change, equity, and the public health issues that impact our families and our communities. Support this critical work by investing in Planet Detroit’s nonprofit local independent journalism.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Planet Detroit aims to produce quality climate, equity, health and environment journalism in the public interest that centers grassroots voices, holds power accountable, spotlights solutions + serves the community. That means we love when other outlets share our work.

Stories that are eligible for republishing contain this republishing widget. If you’re interested in republishing this story online or in print, we just have a few requirements:

Credit us.

For the byline, we prefer Author Name, Planet Detroit. At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “Planet Detroit originally published this story [link to original story]. Sign up for Planet Detroit's weekly newsletter here.”

Check the image requirements.

Photos sourced from free/Creative Commons image sources in our pieces can be republished. Outside of this, you can’t republish photographs or illustrations without written permission from the photographer.

Don’t change anything significant.

You can change the headline and/or subheading, but articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s ok to change references to time (“yesterday” to “today”) or location (“Southwest Detroit” to “here”). If you really think changing the story with additional localized copy would help, please contact us directly and we can discuss the change. We must approve the change before it goes live.

Don’t sell our stories.

We also ask that you don’t sell ads specifically meant to be placed in our stories. If you already have ads populating on your site, that’s completely fine.

Keep in contact.

Let us know if you republish our content! As a nonprofit news site, tracking the impact of our reporting and analysis is crucial. We’d love to hear more about how the work was useful to you and your outlet. And on the off chance that we ask you to remove the story from your site or apply a correction, please do so.

Use best practices for sharing.

If you do share the story on your social media accounts, we’d love it if you tagged Planet Detroit's accounts:

Twitter: @planetdetroit

Facebook: @planetdetroitnews

Instagram: @planetdetroitnews

Breathing and Peace

by LaFarra R. Hemphill, Planet Detroit
October 3, 2024

					<h1>Breathing and Peace</h1>
<p class="byline">by LaFarra R. Hemphill, Planet Detroit <br />October 3, 2024</p>
					
<p>To have a breath of fresh air is laughable<br />To breathe and have it turn into asthma,<br />turn into COPD then turn into lung cancer<br />is reality for me<br />There is no peace of self, family nor community, if there is no fresh air<br />The fresh air where I breathe it in and my whole body say ahh<br />Fresh air where I can walk, run, jog, sit, lay with a cough, grasp of air or sneeze<br />I am fearful I will will never get that fresh air<br />My family, my future family nor I will never have that ahh fresh air<br />It is a human right for breathing and peace</p>
<p><em>Planet Detroit and Book Suey partnered to curate and publish climate poems from our community. Read the rest of the poems&nbsp;<a href="https://planetdetroit.org/deep-dive/climate-poems/">here</a>.</em></p>

					<p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://planetdetroit.org/2024/10/breathing-and-peace/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://planetdetroit.org&quot;&gt;Planet Detroit&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/planetdetroit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/pd-3300.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://planetdetroit.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=16891&amp;amp;ga4=G-5QQJ9SVV07&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://planetdetroit.org/2024/10/breathing-and-peace/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/planetdetroit.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</p>

Breathing and Peace

READ MORE

LaFarra R. Hemphill

Get informed about your environment and your health.

The news Detroit needs—free and independent

READ MORE

LaFarra R. Hemphill