Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

She crept down the fire escape again, wretched in the vicious cold of morning. Glanced around one more time, the backyard was dulled, the hues broken and the white lattice arch showing its bones through dead vines. But she remembered how it had looked in September. She slunk around the back of the house, narrowly missed hitting her head on a window a/c unit, hands shoved in her pockets. Returning to exile.

A tender envy held her in rigor mortis, lockjaw of happiness.
Wood smoke languished on her pashmina and she begged it to stay.
Her pocket were full of holy relics, plain wooden pencils from pinatas and a bottle cap from a Christmas Moerlein. She laid them out on the breakfast table, little artifacts brought back through the looking glass. The taste of the beer resurrected spectres of September in a rush. With Over the Rhine on her lips, she huddled next to the fire, admiring the splendor of the assembled company as they salsaed and mamboed on the wet, cold driveway. Here it was a joy to be a fly on the wall. Ursula longed for such a family, the sort of longing that compels one to eat whitewash and dirt, the sort of longing that fills you up to your eyeballs until you puke because you can't imbibe any more of it. She slept like a baby on the futon while the wind swelled up and roared around the old house.

Switchblades Preferred

Ursula stiffed it through her shift, with a new notch in the game of resignation building in between her shoulders. He brushed her elbow with his fingers several times and she did not respond at all. Inwardly, she sneered. Setting the container carelessly onto the scale, she traced it back to the source, or as near as she could get. She thought, but didn’t say aloud, you see that line of demarcation back there by the trees? Back there, no, further still? Flirt, that’s right, go on, flirt. Joke about hooking up before you get married, and I will fake laugh and slow-burn full of rage because behind every joke is some shred of truth. Keep making passes at me under the cover of good humor and comedy. That makes it totally acceptable. Do you realize, I’m counting the hours until I will never have to see you again? Yet, sometimes it is enough to hold a set of aces in your hand. She wondered and frowned at the line of demarcation and how everyone came waltzing on over it, cool as you please, as though she’d sent them a gold-leaf invitation.

She fled early, speeding down the golden-lit business park boulevard home, the corner of her eye fixed on a frozen plume rising from one of the office complexes. Shed a layer of snake skin joyfully as soon as she got in the door and pulled the postcard from the pages of a book.
It said little. Albuquerque. She thought of heavy snow as I-40 wound through the rock and then a blaze of lights sprawling out beside and below them. She thought of the green dash lights and crimson taillights painting his features. She thought of the enormous, brilliant rising moon. It raised more questions than it answered, but its tangibility soothed. Remote, yet remembered. She wished he'd let her try to help. She hoped he didn't think she'd make things worse.
"Who told you there was no such thing as real, true, eternal love? Cut out his lying tongue!"

Grease the night

Late afternoon December Thursday
a stain glass blue punch bowl behind the trees
her bones feel the pull of some mystery

Grey wool socks

She drove out to the boardwalk after their basset hound fell asleep. The dog was old and getting deaf. She’d never been a watch dog, but if she’d seen Ursula leave, she would sit and cry until she woke the house. No one was awake out here. She lifted the hatchback gate and pulled out the sleeping bag which she always kept there. The stars were still pretty faint from the neighborhoods looming on two sides of the wetland. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but her night vision was pretty good and she walked some distance into the swamp. She tugged her hat snugger and the cottonwoods whispered hoarsely at her for taking such a risk with her health. She zipped herself into the sleeping bag securely and sighed and slept. In the morning she could see her breath. She drove home and piled logs in the fireplace, the old hound worrying around her ankles like a cat. Hearing people begin to stir above and below stairs, she made coffee and a large batch of eggs. Setting it off the burner, she poured herself a mug and sat on the couch, tucking her grey wool stockinged feet beneath her. The basset hound set her head on the sofa cushion and looked up at her anxiously.

Angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy can't you show me nothing but surrender?"

Damn you, you fresh-faced Judas
I would redeem you
So give me my sin again.