How dark and thin
The blood that swirls from no clear spring.
Salty dew on my forehead, a heavy breath beneath the mask
Irises constricted
Your pulse audibly racing against my heartbeat
Palpable life slipping between the pores of soaked gauze.
Who are you and why now?
Who am I and why here?
Your blood against my flesh like a final cling to human life
A past, but not future.
Anticipated peace as the monitor will soon be silent.
In a millionth of a second, the turmoil of the blood hits my blind hand.
A clamp. A stitch. A sigh. A future.
Ephemeral defeat
Eternal win.
You’ll never know.
I’ll never forget.
Footnotes
Contributors I am the sole author.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
