In another time she would have fled this granitic city, this museum of suffering, and in the opium of the moment found a lover, her eyes ripening with desire, a wicked smile scythed across her mouth, dark hair scribing her body as she rises dripping from a bath. Her lover would also be a painter, his pigments clothing her in yellow made of cadmium and camel piss, nimbusing her in memory, the blue gravity of her glance from across the room. He would put his mouth against her waxscarred hands, each wound in devotion to her God, and kiss each finger, the taste of salt and stillness, the red of apothecaries, vanquished flags, impure thoughts. Free from minding her gardens of candles, from snuffing the blades of flames, her hands would move over the pale country of his body, blue rivers coursing beneath his skin. From the green courts of Europe he would garland her in sable, wrap her in cursives of mink. In the evenings dark spokes of shadow would finger through the curtains and together they would sink into uncandled darkness, seeking carbon, bone, midnight, all the colors of extinction. For all her days she would remember the scent of woodfire in his hair, the language of amber and champagne. Now in this trance of wax and fire her breathing slows and she drops deeper into the well of herself, the stillness called prayer. Something ancient formless flickering. God in the fire god in the night. Unmoored from time and place, floating in the numinous.
