Thursday, February 12, 2015

Yellow

She sits, stiff in the square-backed chair. Beside her, rotten flowers send their offense to mix with the subtle smell of tooth decay.

She is old, certainly, but it is an oldness which transcends time - it is not the years, but the resignation. It is not the failings of her limbs, but the failing of old jokes, half forgotten hymns.

No one visits. No one calls. She doesn't notice, doesn't care, she scratches the yellow flakes from her oat-flecked hair.

It was here that it all started - here, the words imparted.

Dearly departed.

It has all turned yellow. The cushions and the curtains and the whites of her eyes. She is an old, yellow woman and sometimes that makes her smile. It is a twisted smile, full of yellow tooth, cracked like a gum-snatched phone booth.

The doorbell rings and she laughs. She has divorced herself from the world of doorbells. The world of gentle smiles. Wedding bells. She sees her husband's visage in an old snapshot and wonders who they both are. Some youngsters, familiar - but she cannot pull the memory from the yellow haze.

And this is how she spends her days.

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