Where the pulse went quiet

Where the Pulse Went Quiet

I felt it—

not as thunder, but the slipping of thread

through the needle of now.

Her heartbeat faded into my fingers,

a hush that bloomed in my chest

like a room suddenly emptied of breath.

The world did not tilt—

it folded.

As if time remembered

how to be still.

The silence was not empty—

it had a shape,

like the hush before snowfall.

Her warmth lingered in my palms,

a ghost of rhythm,

a memory learning how to unravel.

I didn’t cry.

I listened—

to the ceiling, the steady IV drip,

the world folding in soft rebellion

against absence.

I carried her absence like a seed—

not heavy, but persistent.

It grew roots in places I didn’t expect:

beneath laughter,

beneath sleep.

I learned the shape of missing

by tracing shadows

on days she never saw.

Her voice became a weather system—

not gone,

just scattered.

Some mornings, I mistook wind for her breath.

Some nights, I swore the stars pulsed

in her rhythm.

I carried her in the smallest changes—

the way I opened the curtains slower,

as if the light might bruise.

Words shifted in my mouth,

certain ones too heavy to speak—

mother, gone, remember.

They curled behind my teeth,

waiting for a softer day.

Grief taught me new rituals:

how to hold still when the world turns sharp,

how to find her

in the crackle of old pages

or the hush after a line of poetry ends.

Not a haunting—

but a haunting beauty.

She still arrives like weather—

not invited, not refused.

A scent, a song, the slant of late afternoon

and suddenly,

she’s everywhere.

I’ll be folding laundry,

and grief will climb in

between the towels.

I’ll speak a word she once loved,

and the air will tilt toward memory.

She threads through me—

storm-wild,

then rain-soft,

then gone again.

And when the storm passes,

I find her

in the steam rising off morning coffee,

in the sigh the wind makes

through half-open windows.

Not gone—

just rewritten

in the hush between moments,

the way light rewrites a room

before the rain returns.

This poem is for my mother, Maria Sandel, who left us on June 19th.

It began as a quiet attempt to trace the outline of that moment—the instant everything changed—and to honor the echoes that remain. Through image, silence, and metaphor, I tried to shape grief without collapsing under it. Where the Pulse Went Quiet isn’t just a map of loss—it’s also a record of how love lingers: in weather, in memory, in everyday light.

For anyone who has felt someone slip away yet remain everywhere—I hope this speaks gently to your own quiet places.