off to the gingermilk and the red door, this is ada. if you go through the hallways of the cabarets they will hand you the pillowcases. you inhale the mica dust through a pail, leaving patterns on the linens. they say that's the way it is. once again:
that's the way it is.
keep your eye on the blue gingham and ivory displays. every word pours forth from the kitchen.
- - -
i have met a girl who has tasted the cane. "heaven forgive me," she says. "i am in love with a modelling girl. her skin is like alabaster and her hair is the color of fire. i make love to the corner of her mouth, i make love to the shallows of her collarbone, i make love to the crests of her twin-pronged hips. i live only for her and for when that thin thread of glass connects us, stains her lips.
"we meet every third of the week at the tuesday moon. oh god oh god oh god i know it's wrong. when i met her there was this cobalt velveteen about her waist and i had to follow her up so many stairs. complete blackness. we were both so heavy and the first time i was so afraid." a smile full of tension. "as i said, heaven forgive me."
i lay prostrate and her words continue, so foreign to me. they fade in and out. "pulling... pinned.... tangled... ripping away... white, like eating the air..." each syllable is a drop in the bucket. "i see every rib, her fingers fanning through my hands. so slender... a dark spot, her smell-"
a train cuts through, passing us by.
"it's so strange how in those moments you can become so consumed with giving pleasure to another creature," she says. "every heartbeat in the wrist, every breath. it's pure benevolence..."
this can't be real. the words are too perfect. you must be a writer, i think to myself. are you a writer? but no sound escapes me. the mica pail tips over and gathers into a glittering mist.
"...so effortlessly... thisssssss sharp... audacity." a long sigh. "oh, those brief sets of time she belongs to me and my blood turns into static. i know it's because of what i'm doing to her. i feel like a man."
i wander away through the various coke bottles and wonder, why did she tell so much? the clinking of glass echoes around my feet like chimes.
"i have to go," i keep saying. "i have to go."
i have forgotten someone.
slipping in a puddle of gingermilk, passing the ecstatically noisy dressing rooms. the sounds of my heels on the floor iare too loud. the mice scurry and squeak.
before i left i had asked for the girl's name, the one whose slender fingers had proven so bewitching.
"her name is adeline," she said. "adeline. if you want her, you have to follow her through the snow."
i didn't know what to say. heaven forgive that, i suppose.
out the red door. the streets are littered with possums on the way to the station. red and gold wallpaper lines the caves. i may offer a leaf in exchange for a seat but it's hard to agree to the terms when all the sheep are yelling at me. so i post a letter to the wind and hope he'll find me. i am still quite a ways away.
come come come quickly- see the lightning over the sea? it's the shade of his blood, it is ultramarine. the earth trembles beneath me.
"it looks satisfying enough," i say to no one in particular. "good for them."
i wear my favorite shoes upon my arrival at the docks, boarding the boat. "gingermilk the red door." they punch my ticket and i feed the ducks. they nibble and nibble away, bread crumbs spilling all around. it is then i spy adeline, reading the memoirs of anaïs nin while reclining in billows of white. she is on another boat across the way, a young man rowing away under the shade of a parasol. we wave to one another but it is rather slow and sad.
she drifts away. the last i see of her is that calm, undulating set of fingers before fading from sight.
"keep it down!" the captain orders. each of us are handed paper bags.
how long must i wait? under the deck they play bridge and dream of heaven. the sailors love those occupations particularly. they say that during these times all you can do is straighten your hems.
three days go by, each a different shade of blue that grows richer and richer as we approach. i see the harbor and a canvas sky. i am floating into a set. paper moon, cardboard sea, i think, surveying all of this. these things aren't real. they become gorgeous miniatures.
where? where is-
nothing looks familiar. a broken autoharp plays somewhere offshore like a set of curtains opening. i am far from where i began yet i still can't find the words. i have drifted into the deepest shade of violet i've ever seen. my breath tunnels out like a cyclone and i've never felt so small, so big, so uncertain. i can't process the details of what's around me. my ignorance is god-like.
but he is there and he is as real as ever, stumbling among the rubble and bits of glass. he takes me by the hand so we can retreat down the zig-zags of the broken docks and over a charred boardwalk. right then my open letter flits by, so inconspicuously in the wind.
