This poetry performance explores notions of how aspiration, as verb and noun, process and affect, provides the impetus for liveliness amidst the realities of a stifling world. The word aspiration refers not only the action of breathing into; it is also that which is breathed out; as well as being “the action of aspiring” or a “steadfast desire or longing for something above one” (OED Online). In the current global moment – characterised by late-stage capitalism and the resultant asphyxiation of lifeforms, macrocosms and importantly, hope – aspiring to breathe and aspiring to live for something greater appears as an almost radical act of liveliness. Through a diffractive reading of aspirations – from the spheres of reproduction and techno-medical interventions to the creation of artforms that express hopes, desires and longing – this work goes on a lyrical journey to bring together and bring into focus various labours of liveliness. The medium of performance itself is a methodological choice that reflects the performativity of aspiration, that is, what aspirations bring about to happen in the world.