Keeper of Last Breaths
I move through the quiet spaces
between a heartbeat and it's echo,
where galaxies loosen their grip
and drifts like ash across the dark.
Most never notice me.
They feel only a thinning,
a soft unraveling at the edges,
as if the world has exhaled
and forgotten to breathe again.
I do not hurry.
I have learned the patience
of collapsing stars,
the slow surrender of light
as it folds into its own absence.
Sometimes I linger beside them,
listening to the small sounds
a soul makes when it begins to loosen,
the tremor of memory,
the faint crack of a name
trying to stay whole.
They ask me who I am,
though not with words.
A tremor in the breath,
a widening of the eyes,
the body always knows me first.
I watch the moment recognition blooms
slow as frost across a windowpane.
The air tightens.
The light recoils.
Even the shadows lean away.
Some try to speak,
but their voices collapse
before the sound can form.
They understand then,
not from my shape,
but from the sudden absence
of everything that kept them warm.
I do not wear a face.
I do not need one.
They know me anyway.
It is always the same,
that quiet, sinking realization
that I am not a visitor,
but the destination.
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