She was born
of pumping blood and marrow
just a few doors down,
now returning
as vulnerable as in
her first August night,
the fireflies glowing
like the screen that
now marks her pulse.

her blood kept pumping,
eighty beats per minute,
as a tiny fiber network
grew in her head, like the
stitching of woven cloth
now wrapped around her
cranium.

her bones and mind expanded
as her pulse began to slow
to the steady pace
of a young adult, as unmoving
as the doctor's hand as he
quietly slows her breathing;

she feels nothing now
as the mist gently courses
its way through her body,
smoothly,
like her first tender transplant
of blood and flesh.

the steady metronome
that marks the pushes and pulls
of her heart
is becoming more erratic,
like the dance
her body took as she
twirled from her seat
that evening,
her heart beating at
one hundred miles per hour.

the beeps that once
marked her birth
cease in an instant, as
a final deep fluttering
of life flows
through her veins;

she watches
as the doctors
leave quietly
to speak with her mother,
her heart racing in silence.