I looked at the tombstone, cold and bare,
And all it spoke was love’s despair-
To love, to be loved, to hold for a while,

Behind me, the sky was bare,
A canvas stretched by emptiness
Men and women, faceless,
Feeding hunger that never knew a soul.

The sun bowed down, the hours slipped away,
But the clock kept ticking, as if to say-
That the soul, unmeasured, keeps no time,
Lost in the race,

At the hospital’s quiet edge,
Where life wavered between the inhale and the eternal,
I asked the frail what they carried into the void.
Their lips trembled, but only love spilled forth:
“To be loved, to have loved.