The woman waits till her hand stops shaking, draws the bright red smear across lips that seemed to narrow each night while she sleeps. She tries to wipe away the color from where her lips once used to be with fingers that used be strong and still.

Unsteady fingers lose the cap, her hand a fluttering fan in some Southern July morning. The pills the doctor gave her offered some small control, but not complete. She hates their waving her infirmities like banners of her age. It isn't right. It isn't fair.

The lipstick tube falls too from her hand to the floor, rolls like a child laughing down grassy hils, under the table, far out of reach.