DEATH Poem: It Waits. It Devours. We Become Echoes., by Jessica Davis Caldwell

It arrives between heartbeats—no tolling bell, no whispered omen. Only weight, ancient as the first silence, curling inside your ribs, prying them apart as rust devours steel.

It does not strike. Striking would be mercy. Instead, it dismantles. Piece by fragile piece, it unspools you— thread by trembling thread, nerve by burning nerve.

It does not hurry. It lingers. It tastes. Patient as floodwaters swallowing cities, certain as gravity’s pull on falling leaves— it knows what time knows: all things yield.

A scream rises—pure instinct, not defiance— shattering like prayer against indifferent stars. Breath. It steals that first. It threads through marrow like moonlight through water— beautiful, almost, if beauty could drown, if grace could suffocate.

And when you plead—for you will plead— it listens. Not from mercy, but from appetite. It savors your terror like aged wine, rolling it across its tongue, measuring each tremor.

Then, with cruel precision, it resumes. Slower now. More deliberate.

Until you are hollowed— until silence hums in the chamber where your soul once dwelled, until even the echo forgets your name.

Until silence is the only thing that remembers.