Handsome shades of murk crackle the joints in your bony fingers while she drapes purple towels over a broken window no one has bothered to sort.  It's a quiet and moldy sort of night, with even a starry sky lying shamelessly over tranquil lakes under closed willows. There are no secrets though between her eyes and yours, who find joy in absently breaking the bleached porcelain cups your in laws bought, on this blood stained floor. With all this abstracted silence dying to burn your dog hearing thoughts, she finally manages a whisper.

'Dare not let the light in and wake you from this memory.
It might be putrid but it's the best you'll ever have'

   Leaning back, the chair you sit on sobs wordlessly about the strain of living and the piles of laundry no one has bothered to fold. The moon overlooks your surroundings, watching pine trees in the distance exhale their last breath and drop weights of hope omitted from the stars for this Earth. Perhaps ignorance is bliss or someone cut off her ears and yours because no one turned to notice while those same pasty fingers count back the pages ripped out of old journals, all meant for her. With all the trains missed and reminders dismissed,  you realize who's caught in a fog of sighs.

  She paints your portrait in distress because she'll never finish what once was. Termites are biting the wooden legs of this chair and rotting is the flesh on your arms. Reflecting back on your life is worth nothing more than a refrigerator note she scribbled on for last weeks groceries and now she sleeps in a place far more silent than in a coffin deep under roots where some proud oak trees once stood. Being found in the middle of a lost labyrinth with her hand no longer warm, you finally manage a sentence.

'Who cares about the dying trees, I'm running out of paper.
She might be dead but well alive in a writer's promise'