From behind ash dusted coasters sat the worsening situation of the increasingly less young, or more accurately the banal.

Bared it’s teeth to the mirror, it did, above the green bottles of forlorn gins. Ornate borders of streaked glass,

muted tones and expectations. It could happen at any moment. Never be too happy. And exponential corridors

you walk for so long that you begin to consider the exegesis and the Eucharist, that you run your hand along the cracking wall

paper, to feel it lift away and sigh at your touch, only slightly more amused than before, consecrated. Where near the end,

light comes in slivers and the water rises from the floor to meet your nostrils ever so graciously. How the void comes to you, and not the opposite. Knowing

what we did, then, was a matter of breath and perception, the totality of chance and redemption. Fine concepts for fine folks. Motivational geometry.

The fleeting mistress is a Malthusian catastrophe, but she is ours, and we are yet to discover any other way of
touching her face.