She sits among fallen hearts hearts that once beat, but now lie silent, scattered across the table. Each leaf seems like a fragment of days gone by words left unspoken, “I love you”s unheard.

The red wine beside her is still warm, like a memory unwilling to grow cold. The thin line of blood on her hand resembles a poem that has passed through pain to reach the truth. Her eyes are lost somewhere far away, a place that might not be the end, but a beginning the beginning of a woman who faces herself, not through pretense, but with honesty.

Amid all the losses, there is a silence that smells of awakening a silence like the dawn of realization.