Legacy

Your breathing echoed a creaking
door sans lubrication. Your breath
was the temperature of ice milk
and resembled it also, your lungs

pushing it out in cloud puffs at the
speed of a mongrel badly beaten in
an underground brawl. Its leg spasms
mimicked the quiver of your eye lids

and trembling hands. Your white
lashes were more meager than
branches in winter, intermittently
long and short like thinned out tresses.

The flesh on your hands and face was
reticent, the folds clinging to each
other for comfort, like rose petals
hesitating to open, fearful to reveal

the truth. Your fingers were slim like
spider legs and not much longer.
They were strangely warm, as though
insulating a truth of their own.

I wrapped my own fingers around
them but refrained from squeezing,
careful not to release that truth that
was your lifeblood -- your legacy.