Not Yet, Not Now

The room is dim, the air is thin,
her breath a fleeting trace;
her weary eyes half-close again
against the lamplight’s face.

Her pulse drifts faint along her wrist,
a soft, reluctant beat;
the sheet lies light upon her bones
like mist upon the street.

She feels the quiet pulling her—
a tide without a sound;
it beckons with a gentle hand
toward someplace unbound.

So easy, now, to loose her hold,
to slip where pain grows small;
her body, emptied of its strength,
could yield and scarcely fall.

Yet even as the darkness leans
to gather what it may,
a thought as frail as early frost
stirs faintly to delay.

Not bold, not loud—no battle-cry,
no raging against doom—
just one small turn within her chest,
a breath that shifts the room.

She thinks of mornings not yet seen,
of windows washed in gold;
of teacups warmed by gentler hands
she meant, someday, to hold.

She thinks of life—not as it was,
but tender, thin, and near;
a quiet warmth, a distant hum
she’d almost ceased to hear.

And in that fragile reckoning,
her failing lungs obey:
a longer breath than she had planned,
a soft attempt to stay.

It trembles in her hollow chest,
a petition made to air;
the kind that only those who’ve brushed
the edge of leaving share.

Her fingers shift upon the sheet—
the smallest living sign;
her pulse lifts once against her will,
a faint, insistent line.

She does not know if she will last
another hour or dawn,
but something in her, worn and thin,
has not completely gone.

And so she gathers one more breath
though each one frays her so—
a quiet vow, almost a sigh:
I will not go. Not yet. Not now.