Rachel Sherwood

I hardly know where to look anymore. Places have a putrid familiarity like the smell of my own sheets or the close air of the kitchen — fishbones on the drain left in the ghastly order of temporal things. I have been sitting in this bar for years now the beer is stale, the wine off-color the music is always the same, old, sad songs that get older no better than endless conversation night after forgotten night when all I or you can recall is the dark, the traffic lights, the bartender's comments about drunk women in public places. I would like to go home finally, down the long streets north and south crossed with small gold leaves; I forget just where the hell anything is. Locked out.

A garden late spring, honeysuckle and lazy birds heavy with the round scent of tuberoses and jungle gardenia. There is a man in boots that make his thighs look lethal   with a whip no spurs medieval sorrow in his eyes or around the mouth, maybe. He is dangerous in this place he has the fertility of steel. There is a woman in a vine green habit   her veins are purple, her blue eyes. She is blonde though sometimes brunette: