On the Kitchen Floor or I am Autumn   The fluorescent light enshrouds me as if it were snow; A cloud wrapping itself around my motionless body as I         sit on the kitchen floor. Wrapping itself around me, it dustily settling in.   Motionless as the silent telephone-- (My legs crossed head in hands and I resemble the telephone) Silent yet the refrigerator still hums Like crickets on a summer's evening when the air is so warm, Hanging on the branches so heavily like overripe fruit And so heavily desirous The wind itself feels like a lover's breath. Or like the whispering one hears in a temple Whispers unable to be bashful even in spite of such tall        ceilings. So too the refrigerator forgets its reverence to this more resonant silence.   "This is not yellow" I think softly to myself. This floor these walls And as I watch the kitchen from the floor The colour almost drains from them, this floor these walls, Like a snow cone with too little syrup, (Reminding me of the salt air, I breathe deeply) I am drinking the sugary sweet syrup of the walls of the colour yellow I am drinking the syrup and watching all the colours turn to clouds and fade away.   Musty Autumn in her sultry way Blew me a kiss bespangled with lamentations Then, so coyly, she slipped away.   by Dorothy Grunes, MS II