The Vanishing

Her mind is a cathedral collapsing in slow motion.
Columns crack. Stained glass shatters.
The saints fall faceless from their windows.
I can almost hear the echo of prayers
still circling the rafters,
but she cannot.

Once, her memories were oceans—
vast, glittering, endless.
Now they are puddles evaporating
under a pitiless sun.
She kneels to drink,
only to close her hands on mud and dust.

Names flutter past her like moths—
brushed wings, powder,
a whisper of something that might have been known.
She reaches,
but they disintegrate before her fingers.
Her palms are full of ash.

I wonder: does she know?
Does she feel the erasure?
Or is it like drowning in clear water—
seeing the surface shimmer above you,
lungs burning,
but unable to rise?

She grips the table edge as though
it might tether her to this earth.
Her eyes—still the same eyes—
search the air for a doorway
that no longer exists.
And for a moment,
I see the terror there:
the abyss opening inside her,
a black mouth swallowing the stars one by one.

What is left
when the map of a life
fades to a blank page?
When even love becomes a question mark
written in trembling script?

I hold her hand,
but it is like holding smoke.
She drifts.
I stay.
And the silence between us
feels heavier than God.

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