She Walks the Halls

a poem about nursing, death, and the ache we carry home

This poem is part of my series Where Do Nurses Go to Mourn Themselves—

a collection on grief, labor, and devotion in the world of care.

I wrote this for the nurses who carry grief home in their bodies.

For anyone who has ever stayed too long, held too much, and still walked back in the next day.

She Walks the Halls

(a poem of nursing and death)

Death is not loud here.

She does not scream,

does not rattle chains or wail like the stories say—

she wears hospital shoes.

Soft soles. No echo.

She walks like one of us.

She knows the codes—

never falters at a locked door.

The scent of potassium clings to her hem

like old prayers, rusted and bitter.

She counts the pauses between breaths,

hears the stagger in a pulse long before the alarms begin.

Reads the lull in the vein like scripture.

She does not knock.

She never has.

She is older than the first mercy ever begged.

She walks these halls as birthright—

not visitor, but revenant.

She walked the plague wards with bare feet and a veil of salt.

She stood at Gallipoli.

She sang lullabies in languages long dead

to soldiers who died in pieces.

And now—

she wears the same badge I do.

When she enters,

the clocks hold their breath.

Their second hands hesitate.

The air thickens like grief, dense and holy,

as if the room itself knows to kneel.

Time bends its spine in her presence.

The walls lean in to listen.

And just as suddenly—

she is gone.

The monitors resume.

The fluorescents stop flickering.

The world pretends not to notice

how close it came to ending.

Sometimes she passes me in the corridor,

a clipboard in her hand,

invisible to the others

who are too busy adjusting IVs or ticking MARs.

But I see her.

I feel her—

like the way cold creeps up your spine

right before something vanishes.

She waits in Room 12B tonight.

Not urgently. She never hurries.

She just leans into the corners,

where the shadows pool beneath the bed rails.

She hums when no one listens.

The man inside is 84.

I changed his sheets at midnight.

He thanked me in a whisper

that already sounded like smoke.

His skin was paper and prayer.

He already knew.

I pressed the call bell before I left,

not because he asked,

but because it felt wrong to let him go

without someone coming.

Anyone.

Even if it’s just a ghost

with hands that remember how to hold.

In this place, death is not spectacle.

She is practice.

She is policy.

She is one more task at the end of a twelve-hour shift,

written in black ink:

Patient found unresponsive at 04:13.

No pulse.

No respirations.

No response to stimuli.

But I remember how the air changed.

I remember the stillness so full it hurt.

I remember tucking him in after—

not out of duty, but reverence.

The sheet pulled to his collarbone like a hymn.

There is holiness in this.

In bearing witness.

In the way we clean the body,

not because it matters anymore,

but because we still do.

Because dignity should not leave the room

before the soul does.

No alarms wail.

No angels descend.

There is only me,

alone in the breathless hush,

cradling the silence

like a body still warm,

like something just born,

or just lost.

And then—

the lights steady.

The monitors hum their empty lullaby.

The world clears its throat and carries on,

indifferent,

unaware it has just

swallowed a star.

I sign the chart with hands that feel borrowed,

as if I’ve aged a hundred years

in the space between his last breath

and now.

Down the hall, a microwave chimes.

Rubber soles squeak.

Life continues

like nothing sacred ever happened.

But the air in this room still holds shape.

Still remembers the Soul

that passed through it

like light leaving glass.

And I—

I carry it with me,

quiet and rotting,

like a flower pressed between pages

no one reads.

I do not speak.

There is nothing left to name.

Only the weight in the air,

still shaped like him,

refusing to leave.

She walks the halls, death—

and I walk beside her.

Sometimes I cry in the supply closet.

Sometimes I talk to the dead like they’ll answer.

Sometimes I laugh at my own madness,

then keep going.

We are all mad here.

All sacred.

All tired.

And still—we stay.

Because someone has to hold the door open

for the ones who won’t walk back through it.

---

© 2025 Solena Vyhra. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the poetry collection Where Nurses Go to Mourn Themselves.
No part of this poem, including text or visual design, may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.
For inquiries, permissions, or collaborations, please contact: solenavyhra@gmail.com

Illustration and layout by Solena Vyhra.
Typography: Special Elite (poem titles), Signature (author tag).
Published on Substack via Where Silence Becomes Ritual.