Dism

“I think I’m drowning in it,” she said. Her voice cracked. She hadn’t meant to let it.

One afternoon in October, a man came into the bookstore. He was older, maybe sixty, with gray at his temples and a soft-looking cardigan. He asked for help finding a poetry collection she’d never heard of. She led him to the poetry section anyway, which was really just two shelves wedged between travel guides and self-help.

It was still there, somewhere. She knew that. It would come back tomorrow, or next week, or the next time a vending machine ate her dollar. But for now, just for this one breath of a moment, it had stepped back. Not gone. Just… quiet. “I think I’m drowning in it,” she said

She stared at it. The word felt wrong in her mouth when she whispered it, like swallowing something that hadn’t finished dissolving. She erased it so hard the paper tore.

The man tilted his head. For a moment she thought he would laugh, or politely change the subject. Instead, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a worn leather notebook. He flipped through it, licked his thumb, stopped on a page. One afternoon in October, a man came into the bookstore

It was enough.

That spring, Leo died. It was sudden—a heart attack, his daughter told Mila over the phone, crying in a way that suggested six years of silence had collapsed into a single unbearable moment. Mila went to the funeral. She wore a black dress again, but this one fit differently. She stood at the back of the chapel and listened to people talk about what a good man Leo had been, how he’d helped so many people, how he’d had a quiet kindness. She led him to the poetry section anyway,

One Saturday, she asked him, “Do you think dism is just another word for depression?”