The Ending

You save your last breath. You hold it close to your chest and your heart. You savor it – almost taste it with the inside of your fragile lungs. Because it must be important to save. Your last breath must be important, mustn’t it? It’s what you’ve been waiting for your entire life. This final breath is the very essence of your existence.

But you know you will lose it. You know it will escape your lips – dance into the room and vanish like your soul soon will.

But did you ever own a soul? Did your shell of a body ever contain a purpose for living? Did it ever breathe for more than just its lungs? Did it ever beat for more than just its heart? Did it ever think for more than just its brain?

Did it ever think?

Did you ever think that the purpose for living would be found in that final breath, of which you are so desperately holding within your chest.

Yet now that you know what your life was all about, are you then willing to let it go? Are you willing to exhale this final breath and admit your defeat?

If not, then keep your breath. Keep the life within your chest and treasure your honor. For that is all you have left; your honor.

Though even if you keep your breath locked inside that hollow cage of yours, then you will still lose it. Because not only does exhaling that breath kill you, but keeping it will as well.

So which do you choose? Dying with an exhale, or with the color of secrecy on your lips?

Or is it not stubbornness and arrogance that keeps you from exhaling; but perhaps fear that stops you? Fear of losing that soul you so desperately fought for – but never got. For you never got that soul. Did you?

But the time is running short. The seconds grow shorter, and the minutes hasten by. Your decision is wavering. Your mind is racing. Your pulse is pounding. Your sight is blurring. Your mouth is drying. You heart is throbbing as it reaches into your neck and squeezes the breath that you have been holding.

And then it lets go. Then it lets go.

And so do you.