Helium Sonnets

I. 

I want to know which website taught you how 

to die, which instructions you repeated 

in your head as you fastened tube to tank 

and opened up the valve. How can a person  

drown in air? For months I kept the hose clamps 

in my jewelry box, the rings, the tightened 

metal collars that fastened death to you— 

I didn’t know where else to put them, didn’t 

trust the cinch of tin. And was it really easy  

not to breathe? You should have struggled, panicked, 

torn the bag away. Now cut a hole the size  

of two thumbs in the plastic and feed the tube  

inside. A length of string or velcro will do 

to secure it around your neck. 

II. 

When the diver descends to ocean depths 

he mixes his air with helium to ease 

the effort of breathing. The only time 

I dove, suited with a tank and mask, 

I inhaled too many times for fear 

of losing air. How the fish can simply swim 

escapes me. I learned signs for distress 

along the ocean floor: a shaking hand, 

fingers to lips, hand in a fist, sharp coral,

crossed arms, shudder of anemones. 

It isn’t easy, learning how to breathe.  

If you surface in a panic, pressure 

rises in your lungs until they burst; 

if you don’t, the water swallows all your air. 

III. 

When I saw you at the wake, your lungs 

still held air, a breath or two to balance 

all the atmosphere. I watched you lying 

there on the table while gravity 

tried to pull your skin down. I still don’t know 

how long you sat on the carpet dying 

with your legs outstretched, the air in your bedroom 

pressing the plastic bag against your face.  

When will we run out of helium? When 

did you run out of the will to live?

They can’t detect the gas in autopsy 

and neither can they see despair, but 

one of them glows red in an electric field. 

It must be easy not to have to breathe. 



IV. 

Did you know how little there is on earth? 

Five point two parts per million and now

one breath less—how many particles 

released in death. You are too large a thing 

to mourn. I can only think of atoms, two 

electrons still circling their core.  

And when you went to the hardware store 

for the helium tank they must have asked 

about the party you were planning, even 

offered you balloons. What could you say? 

Helios is still a Titan, and you were 

a man. You used a regulator to prevent 

the puncture of your lungs—even in death 

you wanted some way to be filled. 

V. 

All we have is what there was back 

when the world began. I have learned 

that your last breath came from the prairies, 

not from the wheat fields, but below: 

subterranean well we filled and sealed and 

never saw again. You breathed it in 

and let it out—up and away into 

a stratosphere. The price of helium 

is rising. Count two breaths until 

unconsciousness, seven minutes until 

the death of the brain. I’ve read that 

helium is still abundant among stars. 

There is a phrase—interstellar 

medium—for the empty in between.  



VI. 

I’ve read that helium is inert, which means 

that it is not toxic, it does not 

act upon the heart. And ten years 

past your death, I read the news: 

they’ve arrested a man for flying 

too high in his lawn chair contraption kept 

aloft by a hundred and fifty balloons. 

The man trailed his feet in the clouds before 

he somersaulted to the ground. 

There’s a certain euphoria, they say, 

before you die. It’s the high that you get 

when the helium hits, or maybe it’s just 

the lack of air. He was handcuffed 

and unharmed, and all the balloons got away.