Breath

She slowly opened her sleep deprived eyes, her blurry gaze directed to the thin material separating her from the outside world. A dim stream of light from the weak moon filtered through into her bleak, bare room.
She forced her trembling limbs to support her as she pushed herself straight up in her bed. Tearing her eyes away from the light that reminded her of the life that was just out of her reach, the life she could hardly remember and knew she could never live again.
She stared at the night air in front of her, the grey wall invisible beyond that. As a light breeze drifted through the small crack in the window she closed her eyes and imagined being outside again. It was her favourite dream, but she would have preferred to be anywhere but where she was.
She could almost smell the dew that lingered in the air each morning. She could almost hear the leaves in the trees brushing together pushed by the soft wind she felt against her skin and through her hair. But most important of all she could almost see the through her eyelids, illuminating the world around her that she wanted so much. Brightening the world she was currently forced to live through, even though she knew this light would never brighten her life it still didn’t stop a small smile from flickering across her face.
A thump from a room down the hall brought her roughly back to reality, her eyes flickered open and the world she had created left, and along with it, the light she had seen.
A silence spread around her room and once more her mind began to wander. The sound could have been anything really, but there was only one thought in her mind, and the words escaped her lips.
“Rest in peace…” Her whispered voice barley audible through the night, strangled by the soft air around her. She sounded terrible, as though she was teetering on the edge of death, but she had been told that she ’sounded worse than she looked and looked better than she was’ yet still the doctors insisted that she would get better, but she knew they were lying. She had known it was a lie since her parents had stopped coming, apparently it was too much stress to keep visiting her day after day.
She couldn’t hold it against them though, every time her parents had come to visit she would just sit there, staring off at nothing, just wishing she could be outside. She hadn’t even managed a weak smile or a humouring nod when they said that she would get better soon. She just hadn’t been interested in their lies, but now she would give almost anything to hear their voices again, for a chance to apologise, a chance to say a final goodbye.
She let out a weak breath and looked vaguely around her room. She held her hand out at an arms length, wincing at the pain it caused her and the energy that it drained from her that she didn’t have to lose. Her entire arm trembled as her fingers fell loose and her arm eventually dropped back to her side. She was getting weaker by the hour now and still they all insisted on telling her she would get better.
Sometimes she hoped that they were actually telling the truth, sometimes she wanted to get better and believed it so much she began showing some signs of improvement, but it never lasted. She just wished that they were telling the truth and that she would one day get to go back out in the sun, to feel the warmth on her face and to breath in the fresh air once more and she would never complain, that would be all she’d ever need. But she knew it could never happen again.
Some times when she heard the pity in their voices she wished that they could feel what it was like to be her. To feel pathetically weak, to know the end was coming but to have no one who would talk to her about it. She still wasn’t even sure if she believed in heaven or god. She didn’t know what to expect when this painful existence that had passed as her life was over, and no one would tell her anything about it. If she ever asked they just told her not to worry about it and that she’d be better soon.
Her eyes had slipped closed again without her noticing and this time it took more energy to open them once more, it was getting harder and harder to do all of these things that others took for granted. She began focusing on her breath just to keep it going and that was when she finally realised that this was it, it didn’t matter what she believed or what she thought, this was it.
She let her head loll to the side looking across at the thin stream of light still coming into her room, but then another dull gust of wind rearranged the material and blocked out what little light had been let in. She let her eyes close once more, there was no point in them being open, there was nothing left for her to look at, no light left for her to dream of.