#adding the tw to be safe...

the front door is brown. and the walls inside are a dry beige. your mother insisted that soft neutral colors look good for interior, but you never saw eye to eye with her about home aesthetics. the coat rack is thankfully black. the coat you use everyday is grey — although at the rate it's going, you won't be surprised if it's more the color of dust and the real grey of the material.

the office is half a city away and you commute everyday at five twenty, coming back just shy after nine. the grey coat is like a protective armor with a lot of history. your brother had a phase in highschool when he thought fashion was the only way of self-expression that was ever valid and bought a whole sewing machine. his first result, the fabrics from god-knows-where, is this battered grey coat. it's downright horrendous, worn and torn at the edges thanks to the amateur handicraft and the everyday use. the red lining on it clashes horribly against the base color — he said once it was a symbolism of one's immense passion rebelling against the system that forces everyone into molds and turns people into copies of robots, robots into copies of people. you've used this coat everyday for two years since you started working at the office.

your current job pays well. well enough to put food on the table. well, that's a lie. your mother puts the food on the table. your father passed away two years ago. your mother still cooks the same dishes she's always cooked, places the food atop of the same cracked ceramic plates she's always had, tells the same anecdotes of her sweet youth and your father's hardships through his life as she's always done. but you're the one who wins the bread to be cooked into toast every morning, even if your mother is the one who has to turn on the toaster and wash the dishes after you've gone off to work, even if your brother mourns and mourns and coops himself up in his room, ladden with grief, and your sister is too young to understand anything. in this sense, your current job pays well — well enough your mother doesn't have to look for another fulltime job, although she does take up knitting to sell some scarves, and well enough someone always has some time to place the dinner plate in front of your brother's door and well enough your sister can still grin a toothy smile everytime you buy her a new toy for christmas and tell her santa thinks she's a good child.

well enough for you to buy another coat.

it's hard to pinpoint why exactly you haven't bought one. on the online shopping platform you use nowadays, everything is cheaper when you know the tricks. soap and shampoo, frying oil, a new vacuum cleaners when the old one broke, canned tuna your sister maybe likes too much to be healthy, the tote bag you got for your best friend's birthday last january, the yarns for your mother. coupons, vouchers, discounts, sales, promotions — everything can be a trick utilized when you're in need or it can all also be a trick used on you, the needy. you've scrolled through dozens of coat options, all grey, without red linings and varying degrees less ugly than your current one. every time, your thumb hovers over the little cart icon and you hit the back button on your scratched phone screen.

there are other important things you could get instead. your shoulders sag with weight and your mind clears.

there are still other bills you need to pay. you go over the numbers when you wake up in the morning and once again when you're about to sleep in the night.

there are two siblings, one who still needs his time to slowly rise out of his cocoon, another one who is barely a budding sprout, a mere seed. there is one mother, smile lines visible and skin starting to dull, too old to be selling her soul to keep strangers warm in the winter.