The clock stares,
its hands frozen in their final reach,
a silence louder
than all the hours before.

Breath catches,
as if holding on could pull it back,
but the moment slips,
a thread unraveling into nothing.

Shadows stretch,
longer now,
fading into a horizon
we can no longer see.

What remains
is neither regret nor triumph,
only the echo
of what was,
and the space where we stood.