Musings upon musings

There is no two ways about it.

He is watching her dying.

Death's cart is a heavy presence in the room. It's menacing trundle has long since ceased to haunt him. He knows it will come. He knows it is inevitable.

He wants to claw back fate from the pastel blankets, gently resting on her scarcely moving chest, claw back the years that passed so fast and meant so much, claw back the life he still, after all this time, believes is inside her.

Yet he knows he is lying to himself.

As her breating becomes slower, shallower, barely perceptible, he finds himself doing what he never thought he'd do; he finds himself giving in.

He looks to Death, silent and respectful in the corner of the room. He nods his head, and as he does so, his whole self seems to cave in and over, leaving a shattered cavern where he used to be.

But he is still breathing, living still.

It is she who is not.

Her soul, her magical, wonderful, luminescent soul, is gone from the room. Death has laid her gently on his cart and has departed; he did not stop, to say goodbye.

He looks at the body, at the corpse, scarcely more lifeless and palid than it had been for weeks and feels his own heart, still beating perversely in his chest.

Why then, does he feel it is he who has died?