Watching My Mom Go Black Here

Not a peaceful quiet. The kind that fills a room after a slammed door. She started staring at the TV after the news went off, watching the static snow. I’d catch her in the hallway at 3 a.m., not sleepwalking, just standing , as if she’d forgotten the geography of her own home.

She turned her head slowly. For one second—just one—I saw a flicker of cobalt blue in her iris. A tiny, stubborn pixel of the woman who taught me how to name every color in the crayon box. Watching My Mom Go Black

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

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. I’d catch her in the hallway at 3 a