A young operative before the night took hold.

Nothing bartered beyond this point; you and that untenable smile, legions of bound and demoted angels weaving their plaintive wails into the breeze. I ordered another glass of wine and sat back, trying to remember a reference for my pose. Suddenly, it didn't matter---the lies, the pallid vows in a kiln ablaze; all of it the last flakes of some dead winter dissolving into your tongue like acid.

Did the chemicals rescue you from conscience; was the tarmac all it was hyped to be? And after the last belt buckle slid back into place and the last door had closed, were the fingerprints luminous upon your skin, a million overlapping patterns spelling out what you'd become?

You were a last doubt before the rail spark, a glance into redemption before the abyss. And I remember the train ride home, holding a picture of you with someone's else's child, reimagining the features into an infant formed from us; I remember gratitude for genteel murder, the kiss at the station that rhymed with Belsen.

4 AM Fugue or, Demorpheustic.

Awake to a flicker of dawn from distant dens, then the exhumed bestial chorus of engines workbound, roaring toward impact.