Slipping Away

Another day slipped quietly into evening, the sky folding itself into bruised shades of purple and gray. A hush—no, a husk—fell over the city as if dusk had stripped it of something essential. Buildings stood like hollowed silhouettes against the darkening sky, their windows flickering with tired light. The drizzle had stopped, but everything still glistened, damp and reflective, like the world had been dipped in memory.

Edna sat in her wheelchair exactly where the staff had left her, angled toward the window. She didn’t blink much anymore. Her eyes were wide, glossy, fixed on the city below as if she were watching a silent film projected across the glass.

She wasn’t present in this room.
She wasn’t even present in this year.

Her mind had spun itself into a fragile web—threads tugged from seven decades of living, stretched thin, some broken entirely. Shattered memories hung in the strands like shards of colored glass, each catching light for a moment before slipping back into shadow.

She saw her father’s hat tipping in the wind.
Her mother’s hands kneading dough at the kitchen counter.
A dog she once loved—what was its name? Something with a B? Or an M?
Henry’s laugh echoing in the driveway, or maybe in the diner, or maybe… somewhere else.

The scenes flickered in and out, never staying long enough to anchor themselves. They overlapped, bled together, rearranged themselves into moments that never happened but felt real enough to touch.

Outside, a streetlamp sputtered on, its orange glow reflecting on the window. Edna’s gaze drifted toward it, but her thoughts drifted elsewhere—to a summer long gone, or perhaps one she dreamed. She heard the creak of a porch swing. The chirp of crickets. The whisper of someone calling her name.

Edna…

But whose voice was that?

She reached for the sound—mentally, instinctively—but her hand didn’t move. Her body and mind no longer communicated in reliable ways. So she remained perfectly still, like a sculpture placed before the dusk.

A nurse passed by the door and paused, watching her with gentle concern.

“Edna? You doing alright tonight?”

No response.

Just the faint fog of Edna’s breath against the cold window.

Just her reflection—an old woman with silver hair and hollow eyes—staring back, though Edna didn’t seem to recognize her.

The city lights appeared one by one, blinking into existence like stars trapped between buildings.

Edna’s mind tried to grasp them, to make patterns, to remember which lights belonged to which streets, which memories belonged to which decade. But everything slipped, everything scattered.

She was a child.
She was a wife.
She was an artist.
She was no one.

Just drifting, suspended in the fragile web of a life unraveling thread by thread.

Outside, dusk settled fully.

Inside, Edna remained frozen at the window—alone with a universe of memories broken into pieces too small to ever fit back together.