Is This The Way It Ends Poem by James McLain

The hands that once rocked the cradle
are brittle now, veins surfacing like rivers—
My face a map of years, collapsing.
You watch the breath leave me in slow leaks,
each exhale a tired apology to the air.
Is this how we unravel—bit by bit,
not a blaze, but the quiet hum of dimming?
I hold your pulse, thinning,
a thread I cannot stitch back into your chest.
And what is left of us? Only the skin remembers
the warmth of being held, once,
before the chill, like at the last supper.