Agonal Breath

Agonal Breath

Gasp
Pause
Rattle Gasp
Pause
How long can this continue?
Rattle Gasp
Pause?
Can’t they do something?
Give something?
Stop something?
Call someone?
Should we ask again?
Rattle Gasp
Pause
Rattle Gasp
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If I scream I might not be able to stop
Better not chance it.
Rattle gasp
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I’ll just touch your arm
Where it’s yellow and old and dry.
Maybe you know I’m still here
So I won’t start sobbing
Not now, not yet.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
They call it Agonal Breathing.
It’s apparently common here at the end.
An accurate descriptor of watching it happen.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
Each exhalation cuts, it burns
Lashes sharper than barbed wire.
Antarctic gales must be Malibu in Spring
Comparatively balmy and comfortable.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
My toes must have turned to surgical steel,
Considering that my feet won’t move.
All I want to do it bolt out that door
Into the car park, to my Jeep.
I’ll fly faster than a raven fleeing with a soul.
I’d just keep going and going.
Racing on, and forward, and like light.
But my ankles are conspiring traitors
Weaklings also refusing to let me run
Rattle gasp
Pause
Pause
Pause...
Rattle Gasp
Dammit!
Just stop!
Stop it!
Don’t breathe in again.
No more rasping.
No more struggling with this.
Quit wresting so hard with that broken shell.
Can’t you see it’s over?
You went all the rounds.
The damn bell has rung.
The monitors are wailing and only you can shut them up!
Rattle Gasp
Pause
I don’t want you to die,
But it’s been hours now
I’m not sure I can do this anymore.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
They didn’t tell us
Or tell me.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
No one warned me that this even happened.
They don’t put this in the movies.
This isn’t like sleeping.
No trembling exhalation
When I gently close your eyes,
Wipe away a trailing single tear.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
Rattle Gasp
NO!
It’s all this panting,
All these wafts and gulps,
Casting around like sucking fish,
A sound the haunts in echoing nights.
This is the noise that makes my heart pull like a needle,
Liquid darkness being vacuumed from my lungs,
With every inadequate sip.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
But of course it’s gutting,
Breaking me apart,
Wearing me down like a rasping file.
Each harshly moaning inhalation,
A silk noose around my soul.
Rattle Gasp
Pause
Pause
Pause…

Daddy?

Pause...
Pause...
Silence.
I take his hand and it’s too soft.
I kiss his forehead and yearn to feel him move.
Me holding my breath ,
To the loudest sound I will ever hear
Silence.

--V

(For My Daddy 9/20/1946 - 3/19/2017)