The Leaving Poem by Karen Corinne Herceg

It's not the leaving,
it's the getting out,
mommy whispered
through glazed eyes
rheumy with loss.
The unavoidable last breath,
the chest heaving,
a final rise against time
that will soon cease in one body.
The hiss of oxygen,
a tank of lungs,
machines replacing body parts
that have surrendered
long before spirit.
It all murmurs on.
It's the price for becoming timeless,
to enter a forever place
that we tricked ourselves
into thinking a body might be.