The wares of harlotry and the flawed meters of joy. I thought on it and dove in. The black swan of your breath, the penetrating scent of our fall, it seemed gloriously doomed then, the waltz toward the icy ledge, the one that promises a moment of light to the blind.

Watching the carrion shores, grateful for distance. This was the way it looked that year, that fall, when the gulls circled in slow lethal trains and shrieked their eternal derision at land. And I believed you, believed it all, was sold on an ancient coin to the smooth trade of youth, that fatal currency.

"Hello..." Always the antecedent to a severing. Plain angles washed away by unspeakable acts, the deadly debts. What did you say? Would you care to truly know? These thin pressings, relics of a cheap barter. False religion in sequins and feather boas, rotting from the inside out. This was your fascination, your totem reprieve. I couldn't watch. The hawks claimed you, and like a sacrificial effigy, you burned.