The woman is old, silent with silver hair and silver eyes, for all the coffee in her cup, cold the mirror doesn’t laugh back what it describes, on the wall. The music, she sees herself and remembers, smiles she should have made: childish smiles and playful smiles, her love doesn’t laugh, a crippled smile in imitation her face wrinkles for her eyes flooding cold, she wants to forget a melody she would have given only to keep from being alone. She falls asleep by soft degrees; her silver eyes, now she closes them.
May 1972