swan song

your last words wove a song around my breath

your last words
wove a song around my breath
linking us together for a final moment
before I breathed
alone.

I felt your hand grow cold,
colder than the icicles
I call fingers,
and I wanted someone
to warm them.
I have no faith
in my intrinsic ability to share heat—
I always found it in you.

my ears rang a new song—
of endings and arrangements
of finding perspective,
of shoulders offered—to stop
the wash of tears
that would yet bathe my eyes,
but that meant stepping away,
admitting that I could breathe
without you.

so, I linger,
warm in the memory
of your last song.

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