Watching — My Mom Go Black

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.

She used to be yellow—the good kind. The yellow of lemon zest, of morning eggs, of the sun through the kitchen blinds as she hummed Stevie Wonder off-key. Her hands were the color of warm sand then, always moving, braiding my hair or tapping the counter to a rhythm only she could hear. Watching My Mom Go Black

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. It didn’t happen all at once

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 used to be yellow—the good kind

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.

“Don’t,” she whispered. Her voice was gravel. “The light hurts.”

“I’m still here, Mom,” I said.