The next time we saw each other I would only remember the name Bastard, which was not his name but what his friends had called him, how they’d introduced him that first night, because it resembled the sound of his true surname. But I felt strange addressing him as that; even an unflattering nickname seemed to produce intimacy I didn’t care to feel. Instead, I didn’t call him anything.

History or myth—picture tulip bulbs, unburied like onions. An onion is the likeness Hepburn—in Gardens of the world—proffers in the purr & lilt of vowel, halt of consonant; annunciation that lifts ready from memory

The drama room floor is cold and painted black. Looked upon closely, the way Mary does during the exercises Ms Kelly gets them to do lying down, the brushstrokes on it are visible—sweeping bristle lines over and across again, into one another like the whorls in palms and fingerprints, fainter and deeper by turns.

Malapropos, my slow mind & mouth play cyclamen-chlamydia-Clytemnestra like a musical scale. It embarrassed you

What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? is the joke. She turns her face away, towards the bar, for the punch line. She sees that there are stained-glass light shades hanging above the counter, the glass pieces coloured red, green and yellow, the joins thick and black.