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.