XIV. Hannah

Much more at home as an eminence gris;
You were an off-white elephant thrust upon yourself.
Not a burden or a boon,
Just a zero-sum consequence of your decisions.
Averaged out into a neutral tone.
But you're always adding on;
You're a do-it-yourself project,
Building a payne's gray haven from gray skies
Colored by doubt.
Your third guess took you further from the mark,
But your second brought you back again.
We're counting our way down to where we started.
Watching your judgment lapse.
Watching the edges collapse.
Walking on foreign ground with no maps,
But an inerrant sense of moral North,
And a knack for burnt bridge reconstruction
Couched over the middle ranges of your values' scale.