The room is dim, the air is thin,
her breath a fleeting trace;
her weary eyes half-close again
against the lamplight\u2019s face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her pulse drifts faint along her wrist,
a soft, reluctant beat;
the sheet lies light upon her bones
like mist upon the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She feels the quiet pulling her\u2014
a tide without a sound;
it beckons with a gentle hand
toward someplace unbound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So easy, now, to loose her hold,
to slip where pain grows small;
her body, emptied of its strength,
could yield and scarcely fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet even as the darkness leans
to gather what it may,
a thought as frail as early frost
stirs faintly to delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not bold, not loud\u2014no battle-cry,
no raging against doom\u2014
just one small turn within her chest,
a breath that shifts the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She thinks of mornings not yet seen,
of windows washed in gold;
of teacups warmed by gentler hands
she meant, someday, to hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She thinks of life\u2014not as it was,
but tender, thin, and near;
a quiet warmth, a distant hum
she\u2019d almost ceased to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in that fragile reckoning,
her failing lungs obey:
a longer breath than she had planned,
a soft attempt to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It trembles in her hollow chest,
a petition made to air;
the kind that only those who\u2019ve brushed
the edge of leaving share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her fingers shift upon the sheet\u2014
the smallest living sign;
her pulse lifts once against her will,
a faint, insistent line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She does not know if she will last
another hour or dawn,
but something in her, worn and thin,
has not completely gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so she gathers one more breath
though each one frays her so\u2014
a quiet vow, almost a sigh:
I will not go. Not yet. Not now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The room is dim, the air is thin,her breath a…<\/p>\n