charcoal stains on lonely feet
drifting blindly through fields of gray
undisturbed by the sawgrass and gravel
but not by the lack of technicolor
they sense the uneasy absence
the monochrome of empty spaces
colored in awkwardly with white crayons
and they stop and sigh
not because the blankness burns their eyes
because the field stretches on forever
a seemingly endless tangle
colorless, wonderless, utterly useless
unconquerable and inescapable
till the gray wears a hole in their soles
to escape through.