Sifting Time

Suspended between her life and her death,
she measures the intervals from breath to breath,
noting the bed cover’s sinking and lift,
wondering when life will set her adrift.

After a lifetime of effortless health,
she is surprised by the contrasting stealth
and the strength of the grip of what waits at her ending,
no matter what care friends may take in her tending.

As the sands of her life escape through her fingers,
she treasures each grain that stubbornly lingers.
She cannot give up. She has to hold on
until the last grain is fallen and gone.

All of those pleasures that cling to her past
are pleasures now gone. Such pleasures don’t last.
Her life like a book, pages grown stiff with age—
it grows harder and harder to turn the next page.

Her life has turned gritty––a pain and a pleasure.
Each grain that remains both a curse and a treasure.
Afraid to give up what she has for what’s next,
she can’t see the ending. She can’t read the text.

There is no escape and there isn’t a cure,
and though every day goes by in a blur,
yet these last scraps of life still act as a lure
not to give up on life. To simply endure.

The prompt today is curiously similar to yesterday’s.  It is “adrift.”