Through the Still Form

All around her dissolved into haze, the clamour of the world severed as though by an unseen hand. Had I truly let it go, this life that pressed so tightly against my skin? Silence folded itself around me, tender as a stolen embrace, settling where no rest had lingered before. Do not mistake me—I loved them, wholly. Yet in the giving, I had misplaced myself. Their voices clung like echoes in an emptied hall, the last shreds of a conversation still circling my ribs. Then came the jolt. A loosening. I looked down to see my body, still and ringed by their grief. Eyes remained open, reflecting back at me, as though they were gazing from within the shell I had shed. There, I was. Here, I remain.