The intermediary point between black and white; the color of absence and also loss. The foggy cloud that curls around your head and settles on your shoulders amongst the bitter branches and half-alive bystanders of winter, when the cold seeps into your hands like poison, an iron clasp stuck to your wrist. Second-hand smoke that warms only the tip of your nose. Waiting for the shower to become warm enough, enough to fog everything up so you can avoid the reflection in the mirror; and yet you still see the outline of your body. After letting water slide into your ears and down the grooves of your hunched back, the monotone shirt that you settle on after putting away the purple one (your favorite color) back in your closet- it wouldn’t look good on you anyways. The color of apologies to your mother when she asks what you did over the weekend, and were you having fun?; what mother would want to hear that their child rarely left their apartment,[that] the click of the lock turning can only be heard when the fridge becomes so barren that life can just barely be sustained. To hide the violent plainness of time in solitude, you tell your lonely self that it’s out of choice - and the worst thing is, you believe it. Then when you try to sleep, it is the boat that lies between sleep and reality; a boat that sinks deeper into the dark ocean with each probing thought; the burden of survival, but also a gift. The boat manages to cling onto roiling waves, crowned in dissipating fog and calm shafts of light that pierce through clouds with quiet joy. It’s the end to an epic, the king returning home a hero, with black hair lightened with age and a dulled mind. An epilogue.