Death, Its Breath, Always Breathing

“I don’t want to die,” she tells me.

Death, its breath, irrespective of age, of anyone’s age, breathing then, always breathing.

And this patient, her, she, just then my own age.

Me telling her what I have already told so many before.

You are here.

So am I.

You and I both bicycling through life.

The world around us, seemingly slow until then, slow then as pedals spin.

Until this, this very moment.

Life, all at once, a stick through the spokes.

You, in your next breath, over the handlebars.

Me there with my hand out, my heart in that hand.

Those, my next words, cancer. Or heart failure. Stroke. A GI bleed.

Any such words aside, life itself, the life you knew; the life, by this remove, the one I know; that life, yours, mine, ours, all at once threatened.

“I don’t want to die,” she, speaking for me, speaking for all of us, speaking for any of us who ever lived, says to me.

“I don’t want to die,” her words heavened across time. “Doctor, I don’t want to die.”