A. S. Field [Mezei]: Gray to the Bone

She was always in gray from head to toe. In the summer her T-shirt was gray, on cool evenings, in the winter her thin long-sleeved sweatshirt, and her printed, protruding, sitting joggers. From this distance you couldn't tell whether the high-legged slippers was gray or brown, but you could still tell that it was a worn piece. She goes in that ones to the backyard to feed the chickens, water the grass, and lean on the gate after lunch to look around. At such times she drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes, accepts thanks with a smile, nodding little to passersby.

I wonder how long her life had been so folly? That she stands like this in her quiet solitude in the frozen time around her. She also was young and wild, perhaps soft-spoken, modest, not skittish. There were those who loved her, for whose sake she broke the world and the faith in it. Who made her blood boil and laugh when she collapsed on the pillow. There were those for whom she baked for holidays, accompanied theirs small steps with love. Whose bedpan she carried with loyalty and heart. Whose days she colored with light.

Now the smoke is also gray, what her lungs exhale. Gray is the cigarette butt, what she suppresses in the porcelain. Gray is the ring under her sunken eyes, and gray, her every day is gray to the core.