The mind has been whispering to me lately about the shades of things; how gray was once bright - all shades were bright, infused our hands together as we crossed the street, and you taught me to look both ways, and brightness traced the soles of my sneakers through puddles, the plume of a duck's wing poking from the pond - even in the ponderance of moonlight, and recollections streaking leaves, tracing us. It palms each scene as if a base of a candle trying to keep its flame alight. I've since been making the case for gray. At least it carries something on the tip of itself - a home, a road. Focuses. (Carries something too large to carry even, in the small corners of itself, bleeding into the silver on the sole of my shoe) I remember what I'd think about in the dark. It pierced its way through thought until it scraped the bottom. When it is overcast the interior of a home is always accounted for, even when it isn't home. When it's overcast, I look for where the road goes even as it