I was falling out of life, my breath flickered as her face blinked before me.

Her cheek, soft as a blanket of tree tops beneath my finger tips.

My hand slipped down her face, over that swollen mountain range.

I dragged her wet trail of tears down to my chest. It was heaving, begging.

A desperate, exhausted ‘love you’, escaped my lips, breaking through the sun-bleached desert plains.

Her eyes closed and her lashes formed a fence to boulder her cries.

My chest still snapped, like an elastic band pulled too tightly. The familiar aching lifted before my lungs caved in.

Like a feather, my existence floated away from her. Time had never passed so slowly.