on withering away

... she was losing her footing. The light in her eyes wavered. She looked like the oil flame of a candle ring in the wind. She had found her cane bearings again, her mechanical movements to fend off their blades, her rags rolled up to the round of her shoulder, the old hat which pitilessly grated her temples under the heated sun. This badly watered life was hurling her every day down the bottom of the cliffs of her heart of hearts for good. My Esternome would make sure to be there when she came back home. She would come back like a withered flower. Month after month. Ninon was alighting from the world. She was beginning to look like ... her mother, no point in talking more about her. Soon she looked at what he brought her back (a glossy turtle shell, a small steel knife, some yellow scarves that she loved so much, a clear eau de cologne) with indifference. It made him so sick; he thought he could see her slow descent into an echoless depth.

-Patrick Chamoiseau, pg. 116, Texaco, trans. Rejouis & Vinokurov