In the ossuary of unbegun dawns, where light miscarries before the womb of sky, a figure rehearses the art of subtraction— not dying, but un-becoming, cell by cell, a slow arithmetic of zero. The skull, a dome of petrified thought, cracks along the sutures of its own history: frontal bone forgets the brow’s furrow, parietal plates drift apart like continents that never learned to touch. Inside, the dura mater—mother of hardness— softens to gauze, then to rumor, until the brain floats free in a cistern of its own dissolving. Cerebrospinal fluid, once a tide that rocked the moon of mind, evaporates to salt crust, a white desert where thoughts once caravanned with purpose. The pineal gland, that blind prophet, calcifies into a pearl of useless vision, its third eye sealed by the chalk of years. Down the corded ladder of the spine, nerves unspool like frayed rope: myelin sheaths flake away like birch bark in a fire no one tends. Motor neurons stutter, then stall— a hand that reached for a face forgets the grammar of grasp. Sensory roots, once lightning, go dark; the skin becomes a country where no message arrives. The heart, that fist of perpetual motion, unclenches finger by finger: left ventricle, right ventricle, atria folding like petals at dusk. Valves, those loyal gates, hang ajar on hinges of cartilage; blood, no longer pumped, settles into its own quiet lakes. Coronary arteries, once highways of fire, narrow to alleys of rust, then to footnotes no pulse will read. Pericardium, the heart’s thin purse, empties of its coin of beat, then shrinks to a purse of dust. The rhythm that once signed its name across the wrist’s small page erases itself, letter by letter, until the pulse is a rumor even the artery forgets. Lungs, those tidal cathedrals, deflate like punctured bellows: bronchi narrow to reeds, alveoli collapse into origami of absence. The pleura, twin membranes of breath, adhere in a final, airless kiss. No wind stirs the trachea’s hollow flute; the larynx, once a gate of song, closes like a rusted portcullis. Diaphragm, that dome of effort, relaxes into the slack of eternity; the thoracic cage, a ribbed vault, becomes a reliquary for silence. Intercostal muscles, once conspirators in the conspiracy of inhale, let go their small, secret tensions. The gut, long library of appetites, unindexes itself: stomach shrinks to a fist of regret, small intestine coils into a question mark with no answer to coil around. Large intestine, that patient composter, finishes its work on the last meal— a breadcrumb, a lie, a lover’s hair— then folds its empty sleeves. Pancreas, alchemist of sugar, ceases its transmutations; insulin and glucagon, twin mages, lay down their wands in the dark. The liver, great filter of poisons, clogs with its own bile, a yellowed ledger of every toxin it ever forgave. Spleen, keeper of grudges, lets go its inventory of blood; lymph nodes, once sentinels, stand down their white-celled armies. The thymus, that school of immunity, closes its doors forever; no new soldiers will graduate into the war that is living. Kidneys, twin sieves of salt and story, fill with the gravel of their own making; ureters, once rivers, dry to cracked beds of calcium. Bladder, a leather flask, deflates like a sigh no one hears. Urethra, final gate, seals with the wax of oblivion. The reproductive, that engine of maybe, winds down its clocks: ovaries, once orchards of possibility, wither to raisins of unspent eggs; testes, factories of future, cease production, sperm tails lashing once, twice, then stilling in the dark. Uterus, cradle of what-might-have-been, shrinks to a fist of scar; prostate, that troublesome walnut, hardens to stone no stream will wear. Skin, the first and last border, loses its citizenship: epidermis flakes like old paint, dermis thins to parchment, subcutaneous fat melts to tallow. Sweat glands close their small factories; sebaceous glands cease their oily gossip. Hair follicles, once forests, go bald in patches, then entirely, until the scalp is a moon with no tides to answer. Nails, those small horizons, grow brittle, then stop, frozen in their half-moon of becoming. Teeth, once gates of grin and grind, loosen in their sockets; enamel cracks like old porcelain, roots exposed to the air’s small knives. The senses, one by one, file their resignations: eyes cloud to cataracts of milk, retinas detach like wallpaper in damp; ears fill with the wax of silence, cochlea’s spiral unspirals; nose forgets the alphabet of scent, olfactory bulbs shrivel to nubs; tongue thickens, taste buds go on strike, then retire; skin loses its map of touch, Merkel cells desert their posts. Bones, the last republic, declare bankruptcy: osteoblasts cease construction, osteoclasts eat the treasury, marrow dries to a whisper of red. Joints, once hinges of motion, fuse in the rust of arthritis; ligaments, those loyal cables, snap one by one in the dark. The name, that fragile currency, is demonetized: first the vowels go, then the consonants, until the word that was a person is a pile of letters no mouth will pronounce. Outside, the world rehearses indifference: a beetle crosses the sheet, a moth beats against the window, a clock ticks in another room. Inside, the body is a city after the last evacuation— streets of veins, plazas of organs, all echoing with the same small sound: the hush of something learning how to be nothing. And deeper still, in the place where even nothing forgets its own name, a final spark— not soul, not light, but the pure, unfiltered negative of being— winks out. The universe, vast accountant, closes the ledger with a soft, indifferent snap. No balance carried forward. No remainder.