All the Names She Wore
LIVIA (CHIARA)
I don’t decide to disappear in a single moment. People like to believe vanishing is dramatic — a suitcase thrown open, a door slammed, a final look over the shoulder. But disappearance, real disappearance, is quieter. It starts as an itch under the skin. A tightening in the throat when you hear your name spoken in the wrong mouth. A pattern of footsteps that returns too often to be chance. It starts as certainty.
Tonight, the certainty arrives as a call that doesn’t ring. The screen simply wakes, and the number appears as if it has always been there, waiting behind my reflection. No caller ID, just a line of digits that my body recognizes before my mind does. I don’t answer ri