does the wild mourn us?

i saw an animal take its last breaths.
how life like a moment passes by.
quicker than a storm crossing a dry throat.
how we never know when it's the final chance to say goodbye.

it was quicker than a promise we meant to keep and
more brutal than its breaking.
like marrow turned to ink before
anyone could write the name down.

not whispers,
but a soft gurgle like earth forgetting how to cradle.
air leaving the lungs in folds,
like parchment peeled from old scripture.

not dissolving into air,
but evaporating into the jaw of dusk,
where light curdles and doesn’t return.
a silence that lodges behind the teeth and never learns the shape of release.

no one told me
this could be the final chance to say goodbye.
that sometimes,
the end is just a blink no one catches.
a shiver that doesn’t make it to the skin.

not a tremble of legs,
but the thawing of something
that had learned stillness,
as if the muscles had
rehearsed this vanishing lifetimes ago.

not a door clicking shut,
but the spine of the world exhaling,
and no one hearing it snap.
the ground didn’t take it in.
it just looked away.

i'm young. little.
death to me is as new as walking to a newborn.

i didn’t know a life could leave
without ever having asked to stay.
didn’t know how grief
could get caught in the throat

- like a prayer chewed down to the gristle.