He stretched himself on the tiles. A faint tang of urine there. Bird shadows on the whited windowglass. Water dripped in the sink. I saw her in an older dream, an older time, moving in an aura of musk, a breath of stale roses, her languid hands swaying like pale birds and her face chalk and lips pink and her nigh-blue hair upbuckled in combs of tortoise, coming down out of her chamber in my unhealed memory clothed in smoke.
