They think I come with scythes and shadows, that I stalk alleys or hide in hospital corners. But I am not so theatrical.
I am simply the end of a sentence.
My name is whispered in every heartbeat, though most never hear it. I don’t take — not really. I arrive when it’s time, when the thread has unraveled its final loop. I do not judge. I do not choose. I only come.
Let me tell you about today.
At dawn, I was with a boy beneath a tree in a dusty village. His chest had long labored like an old bellows. When the last breath sighed from his lips, I was there — not to snatch, but to carry. He looked up at me, not in fear, but with recognition. Some part of them always remembers me.
Later, I walked the corridors of a city hospital. A woman clutched her daughter’s hand as the machines around her quieted. She did not weep when she saw me. She only said, “At last,” and the peace in her voice was louder than any scream.
I visited a man alone in a high-rise, his life tethered to no one. I watched the city lights shimmer in his eyes as they faded. He didn’t speak, but in his silence, there was a strange kind of surrender — maybe even relief.
I am not cruel.
Cruelty is the world’s invention. The slow decay of time, the diseases that gnaw, the accidents no one sees coming — those are not my handiwork. I merely escort. I gather. I remember.
Yes, I remember.
Every soul I have ever touched, I carry inside me. Not their pain — no. Their essence. Their last thoughts. Their final loves. Their regrets and triumphs, bundled like fragile lanterns in a windless dark.
You may fear me. That is natural. But know this: I am not the end. I am the threshold.
Beyond me, there is something else. What it is, I cannot say — not because I do not know, but because to speak of it would be to change it. It is yours to discover, not mine to define.
Tonight, I will visit a poet in his sleep. His pen will slip from his hand, mid-stanza. And I will wait, quietly, until he notices me.
And when he does, I will say — as I always do —
“Come. Let us walk.”
Beyond the Last Breath