The Slow Ruin

Morning confessions churn in her throat like ash, though there is no altar, no listener, only the habit of speaking to herself in half-finished sentences. The words rasp, brittle, and fall apart before they reach the air.

Mirrors no longer flatter, chairs grow harder, nights longer. The house smells of dust and the faint iron of rain.

What remains is a slow ruin in the shape of a life - walls thinning, plaster shedding, memory gnawed hollow. She drifts from room to room, touching framed photographs of relatives she does not remember the names of, waiting for recognition that does not come.

Be holy or be nothing, she heard once, but now it means only: endure or vanish. She holds the words like pebbles in her palm, cold and heavy, useless.

Someone said the word sacrifice, but it tasted like salt. She remembers swallowing it, remembers the way it burned her throat. Now she keeps her mouth full of ash, a ruin in a ruined house, the prayer unfinished but burning anyway.