"... and go to the grave with the song still in them"

On her desk was a recently disheveled pile of papers with an arm and grey hair across them. Over creamed coffee was slowly pooling in a corner, and, as hours passed, brown seeped into the edges of subpoenas and tax returns.

Grey morning light gradually pushed through the windows and roused the night watch from an unwatchful night of sleep.

Coffee seeped into the padded cubical wall, mingling with her accumulated human smells and oils, the product of years. Her well rounded (and quite round) children smiled at her unceasingly from a forgettable childhood photograph, which they had quickly forgotten, to become the suited specters of the present. Photos of all kinds pinned to the wall, the more tangible the more irretrievably past. A vase of paper flowers, in eternal pastels, stood next to the yellowing monitor. On a calender was an image of a Hawaiian beach, she'd been once, hung over an empty waist high book shelf.

Her last scream had not been quite loud enough to disturb the guard's dreams. Had he heard, they might have been, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation..."

[note: add solution. add emotional desperation born of not facing/challenging]