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Silence of Nothingness

 

Weak light

falls across the table

pale light,

lacking warmth.

 

She sits with

her unsheltered thoughts,

her feet in their thick slippers,

her hands

avoiding the lipstick trail on her cup.

 

She is alone,

watching the dust that swirls

when the ancients rads come on.

 

Adding their heat,

a noisy voice

like so many angry words

to the illusions in her head.

 

She fingers her childhood

in absent hope,

discarding one faded picture

after another,

sees herself in her

chrome toaster,

so much older now,

so humbled by time

and disappointment.

 

The endless cups of coffee

curse through her

forcing her heart to beat

with something

that almost feels

like excitement again.

 

So, she it addicted.

 

She pours another cup,

applies another coat of paint

to her tired mouth,

automatically:

she needs no mirror for this

old act.

 

Outside the street noises

crumble her sense of calm.

She must reassemble herself

and go to work,

to live,

last another day.

 

She fears the few left

she has

despite all the emptiness,

the staleness of her suffering.

 

Worse still,

to suffer

the silence of nothingness

near the end.