her heels are dragging and she lets the grey dust fill her shoes. the trail she leaves in the dirt is long and thin, jagged and heavier than her hundred pounds of skin and bones should be able to manifest. the dust covers her feet, pushing its way between her toes, taking shelter under unpolished nails. her shoes were lost somewhere along the way, somewhere between here and wherever is next. she slides on, maintaining pace and posture despite the fact that she is very

clearly

sinking.

the dust that creeps up to her shins, her knees, is just as cool and impersonal as high tea at four and it reminds her of another time, a time when she wore shoes, when she wasn't disappearing, wasn't disintegrating, wasn't 

silent,

unable to speak for fear that whatever finds its way out of her mouth will take on a physical life and exist outside of her body leaving her with even  

less. 

she gasps as the dust makes its way over her knees, between her thighs like whisper thin pages of old encyclopedias. "so this is what it's like to drown," she thinks, but there isn't a drop of moisture for miles.

this,

this is being buried alive. 

her mouth is clamped shut in perseverant silence. she keeps every word, every oral impulse, locked deep in her chest for fear that the sounds she has left are finite, that releasing them will be like slowly removing fingers and toes until she is completely immobile and barely human.  her lips seal themselves around her tongue, her tongue that grows ever heavier, that glues itself to her gums like wet cement. the dust is settling around her arms and chest and her lungs are aching for air, for salvation, for warmth and red roses and white wine.

her tracks disappear as swiftly as they came into existence, without a sound, without the persuasion of a rainstorm or an earthquake. the dust, disruptive and all-encompassing, cares not what it leaves behind. upon excavation twenty thousand years later, discoverers will find her parts miraculously intact.

"how remarkable," they'll say, staring at her steady descent into the ground.

"how strange," they'll say as they find her lips curled so tightly over her teeth, her tongue so heavy on her gums.

"how sad," they'll say, for lack of better words.