The candle was still burning when Elias slipped away.
No gasp.
No cry.
Just a soft exhale—as if he had finished a sentence.
Celeste felt it before she heard the flatline.
A silence deeper than sleep.
Her hand, still wrapped around his, felt the stillness seep in.
No tremor.
No squeeze back.
Just absence.
The nurse entered, quiet as snowfall, and stilled the machines.
She offered a look of sympathy, but Celeste only nodded,
her world narrowed to the still form before her.
She sat with him for hours.
Spoke to him in whispers.
Read fragments of poems.
Traced his cheek with her fingertips as though memorizing every ridge.
"I love you," she said, again and again,
until the words lost shape
and became rhythm.
Later, the hospital released his body.
The papers signed. The calls made.
The undertaker asked what he should wear.
"His blue sweater," Celeste said, "the one with the ink stain."
"And tuck this into his chest pocket."
She handed them his notebook.
The last page folded gently over his heart.
---
The funeral was small.
The wind at the cliffs wept louder than anyone.
Celeste stood in black, his final poem clutched in her hand,
the sea behind her wild and mourning.
Family. Friends. Strangers who had read his words.
They gathered.
They listened.
Celeste stepped forward, her voice steady despite the storm inside.
She read "For Celeste" aloud, her throat raw with reverence.
When she finished,
she stepped to the grave
and placed a single white rose atop the casket.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"For loving me into life."
The earth closed over him.
But the sky—
the sky stayed open.