"There's dirt on your shoes. Mind you leave them at the door," I say. But that doesn't sound right. Sounds like hen-pecking. So I add, "I'll take care of them. You know I always do." He says nothing. Takes off the offending shoes. Walks past me silent as fog to sit by the fire.

In his bright eyes hides a universe; candlelight is such a color. He confounds me, I see so few wonders in this world, while his is overflowing. There he sits, hand on chin, muttering into the grate...

There is a covenant between gypsy women, still as dust, darker than shadows, they speak in tongues.

"Who are you talking to?" I say, setting the tea tray down. I fill his cup, add a drop of cream.

Bracelets jangle, shatter the perfect silence. Her eyes like pewter, a burnished gray.

"You wouldn't understand," he says, not looking up. "You need a friend, Cecile."

She comes nude to my bed and with warm hair and mouth, folds in on me...

"Who is she this time?" I ask. My fingers trace the curved arms of my grandmother's favorite chair. It is my chair. It is the only thing I own that I won't surrender.

She is the speed queen, dark, lithe, of night and moon, a fallen raven...

Who needs a friend, Charles, who? I want to ask him, but I don't. I thought I understood his needs, thought I could fill in the spaces when his wife died. But he's relegated me to the margins of his life.

The mumbling stops as he takes a sip of tea. We sit in the quiet of late afternoon. The shadow of his chair reaches almost to the door. My eyes stray to his muddy shoes, and I rise to carry them into the kitchen to be scraped. When I return, he is asleep with his fantasies.

Dirty shoes, an empty cup. All his pretty gypsies dancing in the flames.

Marge Simon's work has appeared in From the Asylum, Chizine, The Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, flashquake, Dreams & Nightmares, and more. Current collections: Christina's World (prose), Legends of the Fallen Sky with Malcolm Deeley (prose/poetry), Like Birds in the Rain(prose), Sam's Dot Publications and Night Smoke (verse), with Bruce Boston, Kelp Queen Publications. Her self-illustrated poetry collection, Artist of Antithesis, was finalist for a Bram Stoker, 2004. In 2008, she won the Stoker for Best Poetry Collection for VECTORS: A Week in the Death of a Planet (with Charlee Jacob). Marge is former president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and now serves as editor of Star*Line. Marge's website: www.margesimon.com.