Back to Black

I didn’t lose her all at once.
I watched her vanish slowly. Eye first, voice second, soul last.

She didn’t leave.
She disappeared.

This canvas is what I couldn’t stop.
The collapse of us in my memory, the way our warmth curdled into ache.

We could have been something.
Something holy. Something dangerous. Something worth surviving.

Instead, we ended in black.
 
This is what remained of us.
Not the joy, not the promise, only the weight of what we could have been.

This is not her, not me. It is the residue, the scar, the ruin of us.
Black where the future could have unfolded. Black where the silence grew too loud.

Even beauty, once gone, leaves a mess behind.

This canvas is the aftermath.
This canvas is the going back to black.