Her Ribs Like Harp-Strings, Faint and Frail

Her ribs, like harp-strings, faint and frail,
Attuned to sorrow’s trembling scale,
Each breath a quiver—thin, austere—
That draws its music from the mere
Soft rustling of her dwindling frame,
As though some wistful seraph came
To pluck a requiem from bone,
Too delicate to stand alone.

Her cough blooms into cloth—alas,
A crimson rose in cambric glass—
Whose petals, pressed by fever’s hand,
Spread ruin in a ghostly band;
Yet still she smiles, as if the stain
Were but a badge of soft refrain,
Some blossom born of dusk’s embrace
To ornament her paling face.

And in that room—so dim, so tired—
The very candles seem inspired
To bend their flames in reverent grief,
As though to grant her faint relief;
For beauty such as hers, undone,
Compels the world, each watching one,
To kneel before the tragic art
Of her unravelling mortal heart.

Her breath, once threadlike, now unspools
In languid wisps that mock the rules
By which the living measure air;
Each exhalation, frail and rare,
A borrowed sigh from some far shore
That knows the shape of her no more.

Her fingers—ah, so wan, so slight—
Drift outward through the failing light
As though to trace, upon the gloom,
The architecture of her doom;
And yet they falter, slow, confused,
Like doves too long in twilight used
To finding neither perch nor peace,
Thus trembling at the thought of cease.

Her pulse retreats, a courteous guest
Slipping from a reluctant breast,
Pausing—ever civil—at the door
As if to whisper, once, no more;
Then fading down the vacant hall
With footsteps soft as ashes fall.

Her gaze, which once held stubborn fire,
Grows limpid with a strange desire—
Not fear, not hope, but some dim blend
Of both, where beginnings meet their end;
A quiet marvel, pale and deep,
As though she studies how to sleep
Without disturbing her repose
Or rousing Death, who comes so close
He almost dares to touch her hair—
A chill that brushes every prayer.

Even the walls lean in to hear
If she will speak, or disappear;
The room itself becomes a tomb
That waits to see her grace its gloom,
Such fragile poetry she makes
In every shiver that she takes.

Her sight grows dim—those wistful eyes
Now glassed with distant, pale surmise,
As though she peers through mortal veil
To watch her own soft spirit sail;
A tremor lifts her fragile chin,
The ghost of all she’s been within,
Then fades, as quiet as a seam
Unraveling from the edge of dream.

Her mother’s palm—a tender brace—
Lies warm upon that cooling face;
She feels the ebbing pulse decline
Beneath her hand’s devoted line,
And whispers names, half-plea, half-prayer,
To anchor what is leaving there.
But anchors fail where tides obey
A moon no mortal hand can stay.

A breath—a thread—so faint, so slight
It barely stirs the shrouded light;
Another follows, thin and brief,
A wavering note of parted grief.
Then silence, velvet-soft, descends
And gathers up her scattered ends,
As lungs forget their borrowed art
And stillness curls around her heart.

Her ribcage—harp once tuned to pain—
Gives forth no further soft refrain;
Its strings, now quiet, lie at rest
Beneath the satin of her breast.
Her head inclines, her lashes close—
Two shadows meet in final pose—
And Death, that ever-patient guest,
At last steps forward, bids her rest.

The candles tremble, gutter low,
Their little flames too weak to glow;
A mother’s cry breaks soft and wild
Upon the cheek of her departed child.
No thunder sounds, no heavens rend—
Just one long night without an end,
As beauty, breath, and borrowed grace
Lie folded in her silent face.

Thus passes she—so pale, so fair—
A wisp of winter in the air,
A final blossom loosed from stem
To drift where none may follow them;
And life, that fragile, fleeting thread,
Falls quiet as she joins the dead.