Abstracts

RED The skim on the surface of your soup, or the cut on your plate in the Café des Anges, juices swamping the willow-pattern skiff as she dabs her mouth with her napkin, your blind, blind date, leaving a smudge, lipstick-and-gore, though there’s still a worm of gristle in the gap between her teeth. Mood music, candlelight, wine, low voices in a world of harm, the creature brought down, hindquarters heavy, hind legs broken by the dogs, its head held up, eyes wide, the tangle and drag as a gralloch knife unpegs the bulk, all slippage and seepage, and the way she thumbs a morsel into your mouth, or smiles your smile back at you, lets you know that everything’s just as it seems, then back at the small hotel, she strips off quicker than you might have hoped, pink as a new-skinned cat, all too eager to have you by heart. Her cry tells you nothing new.