Death Rattle

I sit for eighteen breaths, in and out. My lungs

rattle, a rusted set of hollow machines

laboring with the struggle of a whole network.

Pipes of iron, made in an age when nobody

knew, now made obsolete by the slow, forward

roll of time.

Eighteen breaths send air through my body,

sweeping up metallic flakes as they wind

through my failing heart-lines. One day a path

will close. One day my eighteen breaths

become a final creak. My network fills with

rust. The machines turn off.