Smiling Too Wide

Nobody believed me when I said my family died three weeks ago. They're all still

here, sitting at the dinner table, but they're not them anymore.

It started with my sister. She came home from college and something was off.

She smiled too wide. Her laugh came half a second too late. Then my dad stopped blinking for entire

conversations. My mom's voice had this hollow quality, like an echo of itself.

I thought I was losing my mind until I found the photos. Every single picture of us together before

last month had been removed from the house. The albums, the frames,

the hard drive. All gone. Like they were erasing proof that the real versions ever existed.