She tugs at a straggle of her hair; once orange, then yellow - now white.
White to match the speckles on her old-brittle fingernails. Cracked nails. An incomplete set of crackled porcelain saucers, catch-alls for inevitable spillages.
Jagged edges drag on the drying skin of her furrowed face, collecting up pieces to keep and to save, gathering her up into herself.
Nails, stuffed full with a life lived, prise themselves away from fingertips long-since deceased. Freed from restraint, freed from the cells of the flesh, freed and still thinking, the nails - now full of what was - pick up a pencil.
The pencil sees the possible, sees what was and what still could be ... and ...
...begins to write ...
Copyright owned by Jay Cool, May 2018
Photograph: By marina guimarães from BrasÃlia, Brasil (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninoca/2507706064/) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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