The Last Breath, The First Cry
A baby takes its first breath. An old man takes his last.
One gasps for air, wailing into the world. The other exhales softly, leaving it behind. And in between, there are hands—hands that catch life as it arrives, hands that hold it as it fades.
A doctor walks out of a delivery room, hearing the cry of a newborn. Down the hall, she steps into the ICU, where a monitor flat-lines. She doesn’t have time to celebrate the first, nor to grieve the second. She simply moves forward, because life does.
The Beginning and the End are the Same
We like to believe that birth and death are opposites. That one is a triumph and the other a tragedy. But in truth, they are the same—two doors of the same passage.
The newborn fights to breathe, its small body covered in a blanket. The dying man does the same, but his breath is shallow, preparing himself to be covered in white. Both hold to life in their own way—one is just beginning, the other is about to end.
A mother screams in labor, gripping the rails of her hospital bed as life forces its way into existence. A daughter sobs at a bedside, gripping the frail hand of a father as life quietly slips away. Both moments echo with the same desperate cry: Please, stay.
And the hands in between? They are tired. They have delivered babies and closed eyelids. They have held the living and the dying. They have touched both miracles and goodbyes.
The night did not mourn you.
The stars did not flicker out of grief.
The world did not stop spinning
as it should have—
But my hands forgot what it meant to hold,
and my lungs forgot what it meant to breathe,
and my body became an empty house
with no footsteps in the hallway.
The Silent Witnesses
Doctors, nurses, caregivers—these are the ones who live in the in-between. They welcome, they mourn, they move on. But where do they put the weight of it all?
Where does the doctor store the sound of a baby’s first cry? Where does the nurse bury the sight of a man’s final breath?
They see the full spectrum of human existence. The mother who whispers to her newborn, “I’ve waited so long for you.” The wife who whispers to her husband, “I wasn’t ready to lose you.” The baby who is placed into warm, waiting arms. The body that is covered with a white sheet.
The day you left,
the wind did not carry your name.
The sky did not turn black.
The oceans did not rise in protest—
But my bones became ruins,
and my heart became a grave,
and I whispered your name into the air,
hoping the universe would send you back.
They do not get to pause. They do not get to process. They move from one room to another, from one life to another, from one moment of joy to another of grief. And where do they place all of it?
Because life never stops. It just moves to another bed, another room, another heartbeat.
And the ones who bear witness? They keep walking.
Because in the end, the first cry and the last breath are not so different after all.
So I sit at the door,
waiting for a ghost
that will never come home.
