Dawn of the Jukebox

The clouds came down to greet the earth and she stood in the open back door, barefoot, bed-headed, and delighted. Everything would be free to be its own self again. She was wiser, but always and still a fool. Rubbing her eyes, Ursula smiled and inhaled deeply. It was good to make someone happy.

Dearest L,

There is some gawd-awful self-pitying tripe on here, so look out.
xoxo
L

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.

Endless numbered days

Gustav ushered in some relief. She found herself sitting on the roof overlooking a verdant backyard in the morning light. The house was a giant centennial thing sectioned charismatically into apartments where the rising sun made the eggshell blue walls seem crisp and playfully painted sheets of paper inviting. They talked about the things that they were wont to talk about once more before parting for a season. Having trimmed one another's hair and shared clove cigarettes and a great deal of simple human affection. Lying on the rug next to the record player the night before, she observed a true difference in the sound of a vinyl. It filled the room, as though it had a presence. She wanted to string these tranquil moments together like beads, to wear them around her neck wherever she went as a rosary of small moments of bliss. With great reluctance, she tread down the fire escape.