She’s come undone

She’s come undone. Not always apparent. Not suddenly noticible, like a shoelace, once knotted up firm, and now look, untied. It happened more subtlety than that. Or, in retrospect, perhaps not subtlety at all. I have come to believe it was there the whole time and somehow, someway we didn’t see it. Like invisible ink, it hid and we would just stare, knowing something was there, indelibly etched just under the surface, a clue, forever scaring the white paper, the ink plunging through its pores, corrupting the cotton fibers, bloating the bleached wood pulp, till its heavy as jacket pockets, full of cold stones, carefully curated, collected for years, the one she wears as she wades into the water alone.