if it happens
Hypothetically- If it happens- it was never sudden. People like to think of endings as impulsive- dramatic, immediate, catastrophic. Sometimes- they simply arrive quietly. The slow build-up of exhaustion mistaken for resilience by everyone watching from the outside. She has thought about it before. As a teenager, she romanticised disappearance in the way lonely young people often do. But back then- there was still performance in it. A desire to be witnessed. To interrupt the silence surrounding her with something impossible to ignore. This feels different- the feeling resembles absence of excitement rather than pain. She's moving through her days with the peculiar sense that everything has already happened. During the drive to work one morning, a strange calm settled over her so completely that it didn't frighten her- it was a casual certainty. The same sense of finality that cats understand when on their last legs. Sunday, she thought. It should happen next Sunday. She's...