Her blood, soft. (audio link below the words)
Chapter 38
Out of the quarter. No feeling of change as it had been, the stranger,
when they had passed the café, the lights were off in back.
No feeling of change.
What that did mean, the seams blending for those to enter.
One of the last lines written to make way for the quarter to become
what it would. The work of them.
This, out of his thoughts, for Aria alone.
His mind for her tonight, only for her.
Where she would be the time after the next dusk, he would only
hold on to hope.
Up the street, her hand in his. The beauty of the city.
Love shining down.
Into pubs, into the cafés.
Live music of the free.
A thought from her, while they listened to the saxophone of a man
to play. The quarter, a change. Passing the tattoo shop, the only one
she would go, one artist inside. Boarded up now, dark. When they had
walked past. Her thoughts, further back in the quarter. The floor of the
building, their floor. They were the only two on it. The rest of the
tenants below. The quiet of them.
In the room, the sounds of music. Out the windows, a filter for neon.
His kiss to her neck. The applause between songs.
The people in the room. She had not seen them in the quarter. They
lived in the true city, graced by chance to not know the pull of the
quarter. Her mind, understanding more from the body of the stranger.
Pieces of mystery, they floated upon strings in the night. Her man, a
man she would kill to die for, the crescendo of song on the stage before
them. His hand holding the two of hers.
The love between them, strong
throughout time.
When the stranger thought of this. Something inside to take him
deep down into the past, into the changing of heart at the table.
It creeped upon him there, held his heart.
Encased in her stomach, what he would feel under the night. The
stars above. A celebration of swirls, the love from there.
Come what would, between death and the time before it.
What he had with her, the time from their first night alone to what
was waiting after the dusk of tomorrow.
Aria, her long ghost. From a hole in a door, he had waited for her,
to let her know who she was for the time fixed ahead.
He was successful in the dream of it.
Her hands in his, what he saw.
Something he would know and she would not believe.
What the quarter had done to her. How it had moved in, through
her skin. What he knew from their first drink outside the quarter, in
the place across. The table by the window.
To understand the lengths of what the quarter had done to her,
blocked from him. If she would go west, he knew their time together
had meant as much as the love from soil to the space above, the swirls
of dust and dream.
---From The Velocity of Ink. I read from it this morning for my channel, if you want to listen. This is just a small part of this morning's session.