Omitted

The daylight woke her as it usually did.  She couldn't see any sunshine in this far back room.  What she noticed was the way the shadows changed on the bowl of wooden fruit.  Darker in some places and curves that weren't really there accentuated.  Pears, apples, maybe a mango.  They bore little resemblance to their life counter parts.

"Breakfast is ready!"

She rolled over and contemplated the items on the dresser.  She had memorized the contents of the drawers.  A cardboard box of pins.  Warranty pamphlets twenty years old, describing the care of small appliances  no longer in the building. Glass coffee pots.  Hand tools belonging to a dead man. Ephemera with no discernible glamor or use. All so tightly packed the drawers had to be wedged open for frantic searches.  A shrine to days gone by. 

"Did you hear me in there?  I said breakfast is ready!"

From under her pillow she drew out a plaid flannel bag.  She buried her nose in its softness and inhaled the scent.  Yes.  There it was.  Still there.  The fragrance of her own house.  Her own room.  The perfume she could no longer afford and no longer purchased. Sticks of cinnamon and tiny fragments of dried cloves.  The freshly laundered pajamas belonging to her children.  All gone, but the smell, the aroma persisted. "I will not cry.  I will not cry! I will NOT cry!"  She droned her regular morning chant.

"I will not call you again.  Why do I bother cooking if no one in this house will drag themselves out of bed?"

She heard foot steps pounding across the floor.  She reached inside the flannel bag and touched the three clothespin dolls she knew were inside.   Each was wrapped in a different colored piece of felt. By now a little sun was illuminating the room.  She left the dolls inside the bag.