D eep hole between her neck-cords, smokeblue. Laddered boneshapes under the paper skin like rows of welts descending into the bosom of her dress. Eyes lowered to her work, blink when she swallows like a toad’s. Lids wrinkled like walnut hulls. Her grizzled hair gathered, tight, a helmet of zinc wire. Softly rocking, rocking. A looping drape of skirt slung in a curtain-fold down the side of the chair swept softly at the floor. She sat before the barren fireplace stitching buttonholes in a shirt of woolen millends.
