"to get through the next second, consciousness intact"
          Delany, Dhalgren

    Her attention turned, she began to describe her. She will be the parked car ignited. She did not shave her legs. She looks into the rear-view mirror. She is not driving. She dries. The towel rubs along the shin and round the calf. Her eyes met her watching. Her leg rests on the tub edge. Her eyebrows skate. If the car is not a taxi, what is she doing in the back seat? Beneath the cloth, the skin warms, the flat rubbed hairs rise. It is for this pleasure. The hair so slick against the skin had the eye glued. From bath to car, feather sweetness, a quality of hair, twirl, another, the eye unfixes. Her toes curl. She stumbles upon her stubble. The intermittent pleasures of shaving appear in the mirror. Her hand to the wheel of the ignited car, she tosses the towel.

    The hamper bulges. How she wonders feather sweetness came to woolly dreads. The wicker cracks. She recalls wet feather fingered along the rib, the shaft of quill. She sees the vane drying in clots. The pile of damp towels would need attention smartly. Like comb teeth under the thumb, the soaked feather beaded. She skimmed her attention. Feather sweetness is like down and such hair was long behind her. She expected. She continued to bring the dipped feather forward. Shaken she kicked the hamper. She bit the nail of her thumb listening for the rustle of wicker against thud of towel, the flick of plastic teeth, the squish of dry fingers pressed against feather.

    She would wet her fingers to draw them along. The tip of her tongue lodged where quick and nail meet. She senses her scraping. Her finger slides past the teeth. Whorls of print crease the texture of bumps. Salt rides slender until at ridge of the first articulation, tongue in retreat, finger in retreat, her teeth come down on the nail. She catches in her pause. There is squeeze and release of assurance. Down onto the nail presses the underside of tongue. Up against the lower incisors presses the finger. More fingers follow until like a mouthful of feathers after pillow burst all but thumb is sopping offer to another mouth.

    A gag of sweetness drowns knuckle brushed against cheek. She will consider this. Eyes lap maple syrup pooled. She steps out of both. She will ponder illumination. Her hair shimmers as the cloth brings it to be back lit. The colour calls for sweetness. The feather responds to billow. Sharp she remarks it is not the feather that is sweet. She notes the texture a sweetness is. She wants to ease the tensions with grainy honey thick spreadable in swirl of peanut butter smooth. Her mouth is dry. Her eyebrows meet. She wants to stroke the place with three fingers there. She wants it all to be dry.

    The syrup of her eyes congealed. She returned to herself featherless. The coil of hair resists the inflorescence of expression. The throat entrains. The moment breaks crust. She returns to herself. The towel lies rumpled. The crumbs scatter beneath the hand. Out of dark table surface curls rippled. Dishes passed. The sweep of eyes froze. She continued to describe her. No lacquer of bowl nor of surface hinders.

    The chopsticks loaf. A spoon dipped. This may be the beginning of an affair with the begrieved. She is wet to the ankle. Her leg enters the bath. A spiked urchin tingles as a flavour of uni cut with a sliver of zest of yuzu all wrapped in a nori nest constructs its play. She rinses the tub. She comes after. Her neck turned. Four strands of dough fried. Slash of loufa against skin rubbed. Shopping had been done. She cut the dried vegetable and the fried bread. Sections pull parallel away from her eye situated transverse to the core. Her eye was pulled away by slurped broth. The sound was arrested by flakes of crust. Some hand cupped. The same scrubbed. Tasks as abrasive as her soft eyes occupied her softly as she sat in the back seat softness. She thinks to drift. Bowl well disposed to the clicking of chopsticks sat on oak.

    Crumbs and flakes of crust linger in the cupped hand. So many shavings offer no future but the past gesture redone. Her glance pauses over flakes of crust and crumb. She readies herself redefining the shadows. Their proximity is sweet and salt. She held the wheel. She could recall the change in grip. As sweet is to tip, back is to bitter. For salad, the greens kiss the raspberry that dressing drizzled. She drank chocolate. The slosh of bitter burned the sugar to an aftertaste. She had seen the jaw react in that space in the intersection of cheek bone, temple and eye corner. This she had connected to a tightening. After a time the tip again came.

    The flat wide bands of the grain of oak rippled. She pulled away. The curb receded. The street lights rippled. Froth swirled in the small white cup. She had looked down. Her nostrils had picked up. Her hand lay across the table. She follows the ringless spread. Swirl patterns so much. Clink and swallow pattern so much. She blinks. She nods. The car explains.

    There is the tooth brush ambush. She finds herself lonesome for irritation. The caffeine jolts.

    She understood. Spacings of splash flood her breathing. Her shoulders suggest understatement. The flat of the blade smashed the garlic. Veined paper flies. Peel sticks to skin. The mashed cloves will be minced. How many times had the tongue to adjust? The pesto the other tongue had captured receded in the scrape of nut piece next to gum and tooth. A particle loosened by thumb is poked to an ache kneaded movement.

    Her palm sways. A cascade of olive oil would fall. The small of the back cupped the bounty. Hand slaps the hollow lightly. The wheel grip relaxes. Three fingers slide crevicewards.

    The tines tap. The spread fingers slide over. Shoulder rides beneath. She smiles. Comb catches. Feather dusts. Hand rakes. From the back seat below the line of the mirror she intuits her nose. The car moves. Her shifting slides. Post and light pass into substantive and predicate. She still has not sunk back into the seat. She smiled. The tines scoop along the plate. She blinks.

    The edges breathe noise of a smile. She nods. Well raised shimmer of ruby in goblet will wash down and away. The ignition is key. Out of both eyes come back her reflection on the odometer steady as the moue not quite composed. She sways. The water beckons at the edge of the tub. The night laps.

    The table had been low. The weight of the cleaver had been directed. Celery ribs snap stringless. The limper stalks are set to braise. Her elbow rests at a droop from the wheel. Her wrist has no room for a watch. The surface detracts from the poignant. The knee bends. The articulation concentrated on the dipping ankle. The car slides.

    The candle went out insubstantial as a disjunction leaving no aroma. The regular ride ran beside unsandblasted brickwork. The masonry of old distilleries brook no acceleration in that car through that place perched on edge. In this kitchen through this door was set upon the oak table chicory whose curls spear the tongue with phrased delights of the grown. She watched her scrub her nails paying care to the cuticle trapping dirt. It was then that the phrasing had endured long gorgeous periods of the edge of a hand turning its awkward thumb to the air and its delicate tracing finger sculpted the spine in a haughty gesture all the way to the back ass syncopation of a funeral. Salad days and cocktail nights tumble at a glance into the declined brunch as the car treads on. It was then.

    Her head turns. Her eyes look up. In her palm she crushes lavender. Two fingers rub the sweat of palm grit along the life line. With a clock but no calendar she could count the passing of eternity in hours and seconds but the days of history were in a block of forever.

    She woke up. Face turned to the flashing figures. The display did not indicate day of the week. Some adjusting, surely. A shower, surely? But what for breakfast? A rotation schedule attempts to accommodate her body's reaction against habituation. Yesterday she had had grapefruit. Today she might do with a bit of oatmeal. Yet still the day of the week would not come to mind. She ate gruel at noon like a groove to break a habit. She blew on her toast.

    The address was a breeze like a mime disconnecting the coordination of hand, neck and wrist at magic. More than the irony of saying one thing and meaning another begged her lips. Every nuance reached mixed audiences differently. The rye crisp rustled in its cellophane.

    A reminder to read aloud a novel without dialogue crossed her desk. The paring knife lay unused by the apple, a Cortland. The bar of soap was slick against the hair in the scoop of her armpit. Her ribs ran with the melody of suds. She listened to the quite trickle of overflow. Her desk was not of oak.

    In three stones and a skip capture transition phenomena cajoled the liquids of her voice. Turbulance of perculating coffee was her insigna. She lets the grounds settle. She is partial to streams. She pushed the plunger. She would remember the sound matched by the height of the pour. She could recall the swirl of aroma. Her ears sense the nasal hum as she cast a single leaf once or a single leaf time after time or many leaves many times so that a single leaf a single time or many many times repeated always always always went down the brook. Her redundance when she skips stones is less. The punctuation is ours. Tea is a strain. Not after burial but after cremation driven to lakeside gravity and river's reach to remember to record kiss driven after wave.