The Grammar of Dry Land

Mirage curls on sand. Peacock feather chariots inside her eyes.

Another deconstructed squiggle passes by (it must be the third listening that causes it to sting the air like that), and I light another cigarette in honour of its breathy lexicon. Mechanical hurt, insect jazz in my mouth, the thin sheen of ice beginning to obscure the intricate anomalies that adorn her blue flesh from the soles of her feet to the tip of her bald head.

This patch ahead is all bossa-nova, a midnight sauntering casually through the doorway as if its spasms had never been felt by any of us, its geology soft and mysterious. A gun is drawn and fired randomly into a crowd of vowels outside, their twists and turns animated by whatever is perceived to be credible when the King has finally been swallowed by suggestive glances from ancient ghosts. But, they have not acquired souls yet, so they cannot die. They barely even notice the barrage fired their way.

None of this communicated anything to her spine as she laid there, prostrate on the string of skulls, enjoying her last few moments here on this plane of existence. An imploding sun an unimaginable distance away had freed her molecules, and she relished the thought of something new. She had been assigned here for millennia now, and it was simply time for her to go.

"I like the way you've come to bleed into me over the years. I can take you with me, and..." she trails into silence as I place a marble statuette of a scorpion on her paling, red lips.

Her gaze has become a league of criminals, purer and purer with each revealed truth. She licks lasciviously at the scorpion's tail dangling near her mouth, and an array of minor-thirds cascade to life, coming to rest on trees of inference to cheer granite and learn how to proceed righteously without tipping off the army of diamonds who want them back. Iam transformed into a wink, where money and consciousness have become one river, the place where the poor, toiling aquatic classes compete to fellate the grammar of dry land.