Don't Blink

Author: Mystic Dodo

Published: Feb 2015

A/N: I wrote this in poem form about two months after my Nan's death. She raised me. A little editing here and there and, well, here...

Warnings: Angst. Character death.


Even though I knew it was goodbye I didn't want to believe it. You looked like you were sleeping, chest heaving, breathing erratic and jerking while dreaming. You didn't recognise us when your eyes sluggishly opened those two times and you didn't – couldn't – say a word, only a moan of pain.

The machines bleated pointlessly in the corners of the crowded room; your death place; and we all knew it. All could see it. But I still prayed there was a mistake.

And suddenly your veined face turned white and your breathing stopped, and my heart was pounding inside the cage of my chest and my eyes filled with tears and I panicked and cried "he's stopped breathing, he's stopped breathing!" but that was what everybody was waiting for. I wanted to scream at somebody to do something but the words were overwhelmed by sobs.

The blood drained away, the puffiness reduced and you looked so unnatural ("who are you?) and I cried and cried and hugged and cried and the family, they cried too. They pulled the mask off your still face and the artificial air stopped and it was silent aside from the sounds of heartbreak and tears.

I couldn't stop staring at you; the first dead face I had seen… but more it was because it was your face. All my life you were there and I just watched you take your final breath and turn into a corpse. A shell. You were gone, just like that.

I watched you die, Jii-chan. I watched you die.