Sideline

And then a radiant beauty glides across his path, singly invisible, ghost-like in faint luminescence and undetected behind heliotropic blinkers, under the radar and pinpoint, faint sadness with expectant hope, no green in her gaze, no Venusian rage, just quiet fancy, small sweet desire closely held; she’s surely a rose of sorts, pale petals on this one maybe, a little tired, expectant, waiting, standing alone against a cold wall, watching this vast and myriad expulsion of longing along foot-sore pathways, the thousand tongued Dragon, eyes drinking the flames, body now close to its heat, for a taste of that holy fire as it lingers in smoke as that lingers in hair, yet ignoring their target: it’s not her but forcefully felt fascination at how they lick and tear, waiting somehow for a moment of respite, the rest, the inward breath or the fatal reload staged before the next volley; “now the click of death…” he thinks, awaiting… a girl-shaped shadow she seems to be, lengthening and curved for an opportunity to steal his hand in hers and turn his head to see her bodily there, white light, subtly shining, still ethereal but in sharp focus, her lines drawn tight now around her frame: shifting across his frequency range as his flickering lamps falter, reverse to vacuum suck… shut down, close, for the eyes to shine without those clouded lenses and see, to fucking SEE for the first time, to see like a sledgehammer into a dark crystal, razor shards: he’s in pieces as she enters and fades away with white flag thrust aloft amidst a rain of soft blossom.