I stood at the edge of something...
a moment, a door, a whisper of change,
light pooling at my feet,
the weight of all I had lost pressing against my ribs.

The air was thick with unsaid things,
with words I should have spoken,
with hands I should have held tighter,
with love I should have let spill from my lips
before silence took its place.

And then...
a shift, a sliver of gold in the gray,
a breath of warmth against my frozen skin,
the shape of mercy, of undoing,
of something not yet broken.

I reached...
fingertips grazing the edge of grace,
lungs pulling, aching, desperate...
but the moment wavered,
quivered like a candle’s last flicker,
then slipped through my grasp
before I could breathe.

Gone.
Like a name swallowed by the wind.
Like footprints in the tide.
Like a heartbeat fading beneath trembling hands.

I am left in the wake of it,
airless, weightless, drowning in what could have been.
Was it mercy that it came at all?
Or cruelty that it did not stay?