Naiima

Winter, 1962 He managed to catch the door just before it shut, turned the old-fashioned brass knob to the right, and pulled it closed silently. Loud noises, even some soft noises, seemed to wound it nowadays. His flower. It sat on the windowsill in a tall, slender vase, just wide enough to accommodate the flower comfortably at its base. Not that it mattered much these days; it had ceased to bother with comfort weeks ago. The room encasing the flower was bare of furniture, the walls not quite white, but taking on a more beige hue. It seemed the flower preferred it this way, so that nothing, not even the four walls surrounding it, could aff