Fifteen minutes left
There's still time
Before I go numb
Fifteen minutes.
That's all she has.
The ticking sounds
Through whispered gasps.
Wires hum where lullabies should be,
And no one knows what she can see.
She's only fifteen.
Or maybe more.
But time means less
When life's unsure.
Her heart, too tired to beat the dance,
Now fades beneath a final chance.
She looks outside
The sky is red.
A sunset bleeding
Overhead.
And she wonders, not with fear, but grace,
If heaven looks like this soft place.
Her mother cries just down the hall,
Her father prays against the wall.
The nurse walks in, eyes full of pain,
Pretending calm, suppressing rain.
The girl just smiles. She always does.
She knows the truth without the fuss.
She's known for years, but kept it quiet,
So no one else would have to fight it.
Fifteen minutes.
A slow exhale.
She thinks of songs she'll never hail.
Of birthdays missed, of skies not flown,
Of all the books she won't outgrow.
But still she smiles.
Because she loved.
Because she danced and looked above.
Because she sang with breathless lungs
And wrote her dreams in silent tongues.
She whispers soft,
"Please don't be sad.
I had a life… it wasn't bad.
I felt the stars. I touched the sea.
I saw the best of what could be."
And as the monitor slows down,
She feels no fear. She wears no frown.
Her final thought, a quiet song:
"Even short lives can still be strong."
Then silence comes
So strangely kind.
And all the pain she leaves behind.
But in the wind, if you just wait,
You'll hear her heartbeat at the gate.
A girl, so small, yet infinite
Who made the world feel more than it.
Her monitor stops