Last Light

At the End of Life

The machines speak in green lines and steady beeps,
translating my heartbeat into mathematics,
while outside my window, galaxies wheel past,
indifferent to this small ending.

I’ve been reading about quantum mechanics,
how particles can exist in two places at once,
and I wonder: in another universe,
am I still dancing? Still climbing mountains?
Still kissing my love goodbye each morning?

The nurse adjusts my morphine drip,
and I drift between states of being — 
solid, liquid, gas, memory.
My daughter holds my hand as if
she could anchor me to earth,
not understanding that I’m already
half-light, half-story.

Soon, I’ll join the cosmic background radiation,
those ancient radio waves still echoing
from the beginning of time.
Soon, I’ll be everywhere and nowhere,
like those quantum particles,
like love itself.