the grey has lasted some four months now

a dull, hampering grey. 

bottle it, flick the glass with your fingernail. 

no chime no ring, but muffled thuds like a thousand footsteps plodding through weeds of memories. 

 

the beige has lasted some ten years now. it’s rough carpet felt wheels, children’s sighing sleep. 

hands pushing indents, the television played too late and too loud. too old for the floor, four cousins four siblings crammed into a bed. 

it’s weave has sampled the living of a life and the fruits of such a living

 

the green appeared only at night or whenever sleep befell the sleepless. 

a colour that frightened the morning dew and filled the morning air with a noise that sounded almost like welcome. 

the green is a constant now, like a checkpoint. 

the price for passing through is a sharp pain and a flood of remembering. 

 

100 plus was the number and a haunting promised after. 

I beg you, haunt me, haunt us. 

you will live a century and beyond. 

not through nostalgia or the flowers you planted growing on,

but through me, and us,

the way we tell stories and tell a lie.