Mute

He begins each day with coffee and bitter disappointment. The typewriter sits idle, unused, the keys filmed lightly with years of dust. This has been morning for years. His crown has fallen to lines, his hair to the color of the letters on his keyboard. He had been young, once. He had written; there had been so many stories, so many things to say. She would hate to see him as he is.

Her name was Autumn, when it was anything, and her hair had burned his arms when it fell upon him in mornings, made fire by the first sunlight through the window. She would lie so close to him, and morning then was so different, initiated by the flame of her hair and not by the imposing stillness and sterility of his white, shallow home.

She had called him Winter, and laughed that he was white, white. He had lived by no other name. When he embraced her, he embraced the season, and the world was filled with color, with her brilliant enthusiasm, and his infinite inspiration.

Now her fire is smothered, no longer even smokes, and the cinders are stored in a vase in the hall. Her only offering now is ashes, white and fine. This is all he has; the white letters on his keyboard. The gears deadened by dust and cobwebs. The curtains drawn to keep out the morning light. All he has is white. There is no color, there is no vibrance. There are no words to press into a page.

There is only Winter now.