Bronchial Tubes

Between your outer world and the innermost tissue of your lungs lies a branching system of tubes that extends into you like an inverted tree, growing finer and finer. The trachea divides into two main bronchi, which divide again, and again, and again — until a single channel becomes more than twenty thousand tiny branches that disappear into the alveoli. This tree is not a detail — it is the pathway through which the world enters you. It is the transition.

When this transition narrows, becomes inflamed, or is irritated — when the mucous membranes swell, when the cough rises, when breathing scratches and cramps — this is not happening somewhere in your lung. It is happening in the in-between space. There, where outside and inside touch. There, where the foreign becomes your own.