Clarice Foo Yinghui, 14

School: Chung Cheng High School

Topic: Journey of a transplanted organ

You Are Still Here

I once belonged to someone who is no longer alive.

At first, I did not understand absence. I only understood rhythm: the quiet, steady certainty of expansion and release, the endless cycle of receiving air – what the world had to offer – using it to keep the precious body I belonged to living and healthy, before releasing it back into the world. I was a lung, and my purpose was simple: Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Nothing more, nothing less.

The body I lived in was attentive. Not in a loud or dramatic way, but in the way that she knew that breath was not something entitled to her, but something that we were blessed to have. Every inhale came easily; each exhale followed without resistance. Together, we moved without fear, as if this rhythm had always existed and always would.

Then one day, that rhythm began to change. The breaths grew uneven, each one weaker than the last, as though air itself was beginning to slowly withdraw from me. I did not understand at first. Was something failing in me? Where was the fresh air that always came down, for me to take care of? Why was it slowly slipping away? I felt like shutting down, yet I had been taken care of too well. It did not feel right to just fade away. It had only been a few years, yet had my purpose really been meaningfully served? I felt incomplete, as though it was too early to cease.

Time became irrelevant. There was no more breath to mark it. The air in the walls around me started to become chilly. It felt as though someone had plunged the lights out.

Then came light – a sudden, piercing brightness. Hands. Voices. Movements. I felt myself lifted, separated, and for the first time, I understood what it meant to be given away. There was no violence in it, only care. The journey was not smooth. It was cold in a way I could not fully describe. Not the temperature, but absence of belonging. Machines replaced warmth. Silence replaced rhythm. I was no longer inside life; I was being carried between lives.

But by then, I felt like shutting down. Though everything was happening so quickly, I felt like I was suffocating.

 I was

       slowly

            blurring into

                         oblivion.

                           I

                                      needed

                                                            air….

Then I was back. However, the atmosphere around me was different. It felt empty. It was not welcoming. There was no instant harmony, no perfect union. There was resistance – real, physical resistance. This whole body felt as if it was repelling me. A body shaped by cystic fibrosis does not simply receive breath. It works for it. Every expansion is an effort. Every inhale is a negotiation with thickness, with obstruction, and a world that does not flow freely.

When I first opened into this new body, air came in unevenly. The body did not surrender easily. It had learnt not to.

So, we adjusted to each other.

Breath by breath.

I expanded carefully, then more steadily. Each inhale became a shared act – as we worked together to take in air. It was like sunlight breaking through something dense.

But as we continued, something started to happen between us.

A rhythm.

Not perfect, not without effort, but with possibility – for all the things that had opened up for this new body.

And in that possibility, I understood how my transition from one human body to another had reshaped far more than I had realised.

I was not a wasted organ, snuffed out by the reaper of life.

Instead, I was the continuation of an effort that had refused to stop.

I was part of a new beginning, filled with branches of possibilities, a new beacon of hope.

Because I once thought that ending was simple – that when the body I belonged to stopped, I would stop along with it. That I would dissolve into absence the same way breath dissolves into air.

But instead, I was carried forward.

Not only for someone to be given a new chance at life, but for me to be given one myself.

A continuation that, if not for an act of kindness, I would not have been allowed to have.

A newborn rhythm, formed in a body that needed me as much as I needed it.

And every breath that I now make with this new person is a promise kept, one that says:

You are still here. You are still allowed to stay.

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2026 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health).

To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg ↗ (opens in new tab)