she put down the rosary and stared out the window at a gray afternoon. Her face was dismal like her heart's fabric. Nothing was tugging on its strings as they used to. Nothing was quite so happy or sad as when she was with her (whoever she'd thought of that day).

Orange, white, red. The colors strewn onto metal and brick. Blank as if they were gray. As if they were painted and stationary. The screens, the window. They were one in the same. She was merging into a world that didn't exist and becoming numb to the real one. But neither could offer what she wanted. That spark that sets her off into who she is. She waited and waited and it didn't come.

"Why are you waiting?" she asked.
"Why are you still like this? You have the spark. Why can't You release it?"

A ruminant tirade under the quilt. Echoes off drywall and the hum of cars. She was suffering the unbearable weight of breathing without a reason and speaking without sound. Cowards choose suicide. The brave ones don't have this kind of problem.

She chose mindfulness. The kind that wraps you in the present and never lets go. That kind that dismantles Rosaries and Gelcaps and AK-47s. The kind that finds simplicity in all life's happenings.

And the gray became the crystalline beams of a rainbow. The hum became intricate parts of a whole. Her feet and hands could move, and all she had to do was tell them to. Even in ugliness, beauty was at some point created. The trick was to discover its hiding places.