Peel me open and you will find— not flesh, not bone, but echoes of words that died in my throat. My ribs, a library of unsent letters. My spine, a staircase no one climbs. I was never here, not really. Only the dust remembers my weight.
Beneath the skin of the world, there are names no lips have touched in centuries. They linger in the mouths of ghosts, curl in the spaces between prayers. What do we call the ones who have outlived even memory? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps that is the final death.