She stands there, in faded pyjamas and slippers. Straw coloured hair hanging limply around her face, grey eyes surrounded by faint lines, thin, pale lips and soft hands feeling out the work before her. The rhythmic work, smoothing the creases out of white pants, unaware my presence. I stand outside. In the pane of glass I can see my reflection looking curiously over her shoulder: dressed in the apparent uniform of early morning, hair arranged artfully by the night, a pale face, shadowed eyes and a dog standing on my foot, aching for the attention to return to it.
And she does not notice.
The room surrounding her, and I, is cluttered: an assortment of clothes, bottles, a mop leaning against the wall, it’s sad, grey head softly dripping. The washing machine rattles beside her, decorated in a week’s worth of single, lonesome socks and behind us, an open door; leading out from the grey of this room to the subtle green of the next. My translucent face rests on framed memories; faces that have passed or aged beyond recognition, the captured moments of childhood, happiness and blissful ignorance. And there I stand, in the clouded morning sun, unaware that it had softly begun to rain.
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