Then her eyes went first. The light in them didn't fade; it retreated . Like an animal backing into a cave. She looked at me, but she looked through me, searching for a little girl who no longer existed.
Then it sank. And she went black again.
Her laugh—once a brass section—turned to charcoal. Brittle. If you touched it, it would crumble into dust. Watching My Mom Go Black
One Tuesday, I found her sitting in the dark living room, blinds drawn. Not crying. Just absorbing . The shadows from the streetlight outside crawled up her arms like vines. I turned on the lamp.
It didn’t happen all at once. Not like a blown fuse or a curtain drop. It was more like a slow-developing photograph, but in reverse: the color draining from the edges, then the middle, until only shadows remained. Then her eyes went first
And I realized: she wasn't becoming a villain. She wasn't becoming evil. She was becoming void . Depression had bleached her of spectrum, leeched every wavelength until only the absence remained.
I started noticing the clothes. All black. Not mourning black, but erasure black. The purple blouse I loved? Gone. The floral dress she wore to my graduation? Buried in a trash bag on the curb. She said color "screamed." She preferred the quiet of ash. She looked at me, but she looked through
So now I sit with her in the dark. I don’t turn on the light. I just hold on, hoping that somewhere deep in the void, she remembers that even black is a color. And that even in the longest eclipse, the sun is still spinning somewhere behind it.
