Samba Soliloquy

Chartreuse-eyed tigers gazed down on me from the wall. She was in the kitchen mixing paint with some of my cigar ash. It was that which I had allowed her to capture.

Her life was ship wrecked, upon the remains of her youth. The late night pick up and secrets told to a stranger. This is what we do.

She relinquished control to appetite, feeling that, that was the deepest honesty. Ah, no one wants to be pure anymore. I myself am not above a little larceny or the late night whiskey-passion-clutch. It is what we do, but I still kept time to get down to business, kept it to myself.

She is in the other room, I am alone. I dance, shadows on the floor save her place, maybe I am just biding time or saving someone else's. After all, she did want to be worshipped.

I bend one arm, right, at elbow and press my palm against my chest. Other arm raised, elbow bent, palm facing out towards the tigers. It is a samba. Cadence and timber, its very happiness brings on the melancholy I so desire. She comes back. One hand holding a brush, the other a cigarette and glass over which it hovers. She watches me, she had never been good at painting hands or feet. The ash, long and grey, decides to jump, coming to its final rest with a whiskey hiss.

She sips anyways.

She puts everything down and attempts a dance. The hunger was an almost tangible thing, panting like a tiger, standing between us, pulling us together. We dance. I want a thing of beauty, to capture, to destroy, to be haunted by.