The Vigil

Again, she moved, and then again. Hardly noticeable, no more than a micro-milimetre twitch. Tiny, tiny flickers of the cheek, eyelids, lips and fingers; easy to miss unless you look hard; and I never miss a trick for I always look hard. She looks as if she isn’t breathing, but if I lean across her, lower my face to her dry lips, slow, fractional, gossamer gasps bearing the cold fetid stink of rain-moistened cemetery dirt, tickle my fine facial hairs. Time passes neither swiftly or slow; perhaps it ceases to pass at all, and she and I are nothing but figures in a photograph, a sombre, sad snapshot, frozen mannequins trapped in Death’s vigil. She stirs the starched white sheets a little; releases a brief, distant moan other ears would not have heard for they are not attuned to each and every bodily nuance as I have become. She settles her bones into the air-filled mattress and the loosely wound death clock continues to tick on. My eyes never leave her for an instant. I will be here until the harsh and bitter end. It seems a million sunsets ago that she was all the world to me; and now I am all the world has left to her to keep this deathbed vigil. In truth I dread it’s passing for when it is done I will be alone and who will there be to hold and love me then?