She slipped, fell, and never woke. 

Passed away they murmured,

A nod, a consolation.

 

It was a slow erosion,

barely perceptible at first.

like the tide slapping rocks, shifting sand.

 

Details lost between the widening crevices,

of shrinking grey matter

One thought, one word at a time,

disappearing into dark, silent spaces

too deep to retrieve, until ideas stumbled and tripped,

like words without punctuation,

hovering disorganized before fading, ungrasped,

forming circles that took her back to the beginning, 

and the end in an endless circle of repetition, 

repetition.

 

Routines and days blurred into evenings, 

where the sun sank like a stone into the river

bringing treacherous darkness

where eggshell bones crumbled

transparent skin tore, and concertinaed.

The pressure of days and white sheets 

Too stark, unforgiving

Too jumbled and incoherent

Memory pocked, pot-holed,

thoughts slippery and truncated

A gradual vanishing, shrinking, fracturing.

 

A spray of pink tiptoes across the sky

An awakening unobserved.

Her chest rises one last time, and shudders to a halt.

In exhalation, exaltation

as spidery sunlight, soft as ash whispers a final blessing,

a quiet renewal, release 

Into a different, gentler orbit.

A resolution.