Granite

 

She wakes up at 6am everyday. She wakes up at 6am thinking about eggs and toast while her husband is still asleep next to her. She thinks about the scrambled eggs and buttery toast that she will make on the clean-metal morning-hob. Make but not eat.

She thinks, staring at the clean ceiling through dirty morning-eyes, about the scrambled eggs and buttery toast with red sauce that she will make for her double-chinned husband who is still asleep in the bed. The bed that she has lifted her folded morning-body out of to turn left. Left out of the bedroom door, down the hallway and left into the kitchen.

Left, down, left. Kitchen. Dum, dum, dum. Ding.

She doesn’t want to think how much she’d rather be in bed, dead to the world, doesn’t want to think of her stubble-covered husband asleep, asleep and waiting for the smell of scrambled eggs and buttery toast. She wishes she could wake up to that muddled, alluring aroma of scrambled eggs and buttery toast and not the thought of it. The thought of it that is so heavy on her head as she lies, almost dead to the world at 6am, in bed. Heavy on her head as if three slices of toast, warm and crusty, were slapped on her face like headstones as she opens her eyes.

She wishes she could be back in bed, cosy-warm, dead to the world. She wishes she could be back in bed and not in front of the hot hob, leaning on the granite grey counter top in her granite grey dressing gown. She is stood in her granite grey dressing gown in her granite grey kitchen, stirring the yellow egg mixture into a yellow morning-mush for her still-asleep husband. She grinds grey-black pepper into it. The specks of pepper look like the freckles she imagines a little boy would have. Freckles spotted over his happy morning-face. She stirs the eggs and freckles with her stiff left hand. She looks at the wooden spoon – the wood is greying, becoming dull, from use – in her left hand, thinks of dying trees bathed in sunlight, yellow eggy sunlight.

She thinks she’d rather be dead… dead to the world – and warm – than stood thinking of ashen trees, stood in her granite grey kitchen in her granite grey dressing gown with cold feet and a hot face. She thinks of dying trees bathed in sunlight, sunlight that is swimming down from the left, through a gap in the canopy. Hot sunlight. She sweats mildly from her hot face that is now wet with sunlight, sunlight that is peaking through the sky-light to her left. She sweats, thinks of her cold feet on cleaned morning-floor, cold feet from the charcoal tiles that she washes with bleach and yellow lemon-soap at night. Cold feet from the tiles that are now awash with sunlight that peaks through the hard, grey sky, peaks through the sky-light gap in the ceiling to make her face, but not her feet, hot.

She hates the sun. The sun is like a petulant child, an egg-yolk, she thinks, cracks on the floor and spreads like glue. The light that peaks through the sky-light on her left makes her hair glow dully, a dull sheen like granite. Her hair is growing grey at the roots, grey like the sacks under her dead-eyes. She thinks how the yellow of the scrambled eggs used to be the yellow of her hair. She thinks how the eggs she cracks into the same morning-frying pan, on the same morning-hob, in the same granite grey morning-kitchen are leaching the yellow from her hair. How the smell that is now steaming from the pan is drawing the colour from her, from her hair.

She hears her husband cough. She puts the toast in the grey-metal toaster. She leans on the granite grey counter top. She thinks how she is turning into the granite grey of this counter top that her receded-hair-line husband bought so she could be happy.

She thinks how she is turning to ash stood in this granite grey kitchen. She is in her dressing gown as she hears her husband yawn, stretch and get out of bed. She takes the headstones of toast out of the toaster and butters them. She is in her dressing gown as her husband walks left out of the bedroom door, down the hallway and left into the kitchen, as she places his plate next to his paper on the greying wooden dining table.

She wishes she could be dead to the world and not stood watching her husband eat the scrambled eggs and buttery toast that she made but cannot eat. Made but can never eat. He shovels the yellow egg in to his mouth loudly. He says nothing, chews the toast, bites down carnivorously. She watches him chew and she chews the inside of her cheek as if it were egg and toast. She images her saliva is butter. He finishes eating, coughs, yawns, roughly kisses her on the cheek as she puts his jacket on his back. He coughs, yawns and turns right, left, down the hallway and out of the front door.

She stands over the table. There are crumbs around the clean plate. Her stomach rumbles through her dressing gown. She thinks how much she would rather be in bed than stood in her granite grey kitchen in her dressing gown. Stood in her grey dressing gown that is granite grey but not made of granite. Her dressing gown is not made of granite. She tells herself that she is not made of granite.